Day 4: First labs
Today we ate our first brekky at Trinity College, in a grand hall with 4 long tables (a little Harry Potter-like) and surrounded by portraits of famous ex-collegians. Having a hot brekky was a pleasant change from the ad hoc past 2 brekkies!
Our first reacquaintance with practicals and labs happened today: we spent the morning with the Brits at the chem labs, doing titrations with Vitamin C pill ‘powder’ and repeating the ‘unknown’ metal labs from April camp. The Brits were there as well but segregated and doing different tasks, making the lab smell like almond cookies. Kudos to Mykola the British lab technician, who whipped up labs for us in a jiffy and gave our whole team well needed tips on using the analytical balance (extremely accurate weighing machine) and to the mentors who slogged through the problems with us.
All afternoon and night were spent on theory. We knocked off reasonable early at 10 as stamina and enthusiasm was running lethargically low. Weather-wise today alternated every 5 min between cold and windy, extremely extremely heavy bucketing rain and a tad of sunshine. The breaks in the rain brought out a remarkable array of wildlife! The flipside was that there were no bothersome marketers offering to take us out for a punt; the punts on the Cam were like armored roman tortoises, bristling with a layer of umbrella shields.
British accents seem to have infected the team, both in impersonations and in conversation! All students and mentors are looking forward to tomorrow’s field trip to London!!!
Team Oz ‘08.
Elaine hard at work
Daren hard at work
Will hard at work
Yufeng hard at work
Mentor Dustin and Head Mentor Alex hard at work
Squirrel in Trinity College grounds
Geese grazing Trinity College lawns after the rain
