UK team meetings

From 2006.igem.org

July 24th-24th, students and advisors from Imperial College, London, and from the University of Edinburg visited their colleagues in Cambridge to meet each other, to share experiences and to have a good time.

In the afternoon of the 24th, the students told their competitors, the faculty and the ambassador from continental europe proudly about their early progress and their goals for the future in a series of presentations.

After that, the teams participated in a "mystery design challenge". The students were randomly grouped into four teams of six (Yellow, Blue, Green and Red), given a bag of tools and goodies, and given 60 minutes to complete the task of constructing a device that could navigate across the river Cam.

The boats were built from: insulating tape, clear adhesive plastic sheeting, AA batteries, 1.5-3V electric motors, plastic rotor, insulated wire, battery holder, connector leads, switch, 50ml plastic tubes, balsa wood, sheets of card, icecream sticks, paper straws, lengths of cane, large paper clips and elastic bands.

The boats were duly launched into the Millpond on the river, for the ultimate trial. Some eccentric behaviour was noticed on the maiden voyages of the iGEM craft. A number showed a marked tendency to travel in circles, and some adopted submarine modes of river traffic. After a few riverbank adjustments, the Yellow Team's craft showed a great turn of straightline speed, at least until its unfortunate demise under the bow of a passing punt. The Yellow team shared their prize of Scotch whiskey flavoured fudge (directed imported from Edinburgh) with the other teams, and the evening was capped by wine and food at a local Italian restaurant.

The next morning, the students from Edinburgh and the iGEM ambassador had the great opportunity to get a tour on the river cam on three of the traditional [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punt_%28boat%29 punts]. After learning that punting is not as easy as it looks, some of the visitors were glad they could count on the professional local punters Kay and Nikhilesh... After a failed bridge climbing attempt and a lost pole, all visitors arrived safely back to port.

Pics of the event are available on

• http://openwetware.org/wiki/IGEM:IMPERIAL/2006/Calendar/2006-7-24
• http://www.plantsci.cam.ac.uk/Haseloff/iGEM2006/page59/page59.html