Another week, another book

So my second week of PhD research is done and I finally feel I am understanding the papers and work I have to read up on. 5 papers and 2 text books later. I also made the clever decision of just borrowing books from the library, after buying three books in one week.

Undergraduate Labs this week consisted of proper experiments: Friction down a slope and the Youngs Modulus of Wood  (the measure of elasticity/stiffness of a material). This consists of people sliding pieces of wood down a slope and seeing how far they could bend a ruler; many of the students seeing this as a challenge not an experiment. This will mean the lab books are a bit more interesting to mark this week.

Image courtesy of BBC. Image of the Night Sky in Brecon Beacon.

I'm planning to go to Brecon Beacon this weekend after reading that the skies there are really good for seeing the stars at night. Supposedly in good enough conditions you can see the Milky Way, which appears as a bright belt across the sky. I've never been there anyway and it's supposed to be very nice, so it's win either way. A website to find dark sky locations is here: http://www.darkskydiscovery.org.uk/dark-sky-discovery-sites/map.html but I'm sure there are other sites to look them up if you're not in the UK.