Ditto! i was just about to post almost the exact same comment, The uk most definitely needs something like this! I'm at Manchester uni and am vice chair of the electronics society and was thinking of trying to set something up, but trying to do anything through the uni involves signing forms in triplicate and then resigning them, then burying them in soft peat for a few months until they turn into compost, then growing trees in the compost and turning the trees to wood pulp and producing your own paper and drafting up more forms........repeat infinitum. and that's all without having to a damned risk assement............*grumble grumble, chunter chunter* it's such a damn shame though, there's literally hundreds of unused rooms full of unused exciting equipment we never get to lay our hands on.

hi! sorry for the late reply our internets is down at the moment so i'm having to scavnage it where i can. Our electronics society is a bit dead at the moment, but if you find yourself in Manchetser i'm sure i can rally the troops and we'll show you a good time!

Greetings! An instructables group for all the electronics societys is a wicked idea! we could get societys all over the world to build tesla coils and have a world wide tesla symphony! Unfourtunatley we don't have any lab space at the moment, currently the society is mainly social events (trips to the curry houses and the occasional pool competition), we only took over the society at the start of the year and it was relativley new then, but we're in negotiations with companys for sponsorsip atm, so hopefully if we get some funds we'll be able to organise some events for making things. I think the hardest part will be to get students involved in actually building and making things, the course is pretty much theory, and many of the students havn't even soldered anything before coming. i've been trying to think of simple things we could do to get people started, so far come up with the idea of a "pimp my RC car" type contest where we give out a load of rc cars and people modify them, then we head over to the park for races and a bbq. What kind of things do you do/make at MIT-ERS? do you work on projects as groups or share ideas for indiviual stuff? (or both!) i take it your group is open to non-students aswell, was that much hassle to set up with the uni? (i guess it might be different over here, the unions not best pleased if we invite non students union members to join :/) anyways, fantastic to make your acquaintance! matt

...producing your own paper...

At least you're in the right city. I did PapSci at UMIST, back when it was UMIST.

PapSci? i googled it and all i could come up with was paper science? You weren't around Sacville street building by any chance?...good old Archimedes in his bathtub with his curious facial expression.

That was me! Only seven students in my year group, and me the only one there without going through clearing, and the department (had) a building to itself because our lab equipment was so big (over the road from the Natwest bank)

I spend my first & second years at Grosvenor Place (which used to have the cheapest normal-hours bar in the city...) and my second year sharing a house in Longsight.

Archimedes...?

Oh! Up near the main building! I remember him, but he wasn't there when I was a student - I saw he'd arrived when I went back to see friends (I used to live & work south of Stockport).

That garden in the centre of campus was a crown bowling green when I was there. Very civilised way to spend an evening.

I wonder if Chris Leuty is still running the printshop in the union building.

(He led a successful campaign to have the Barnes Wallis Building renamed the Bruce Willis Building, but the university wouldn't pay for a new sign.)

A couple of my friends lived in Grosvenor Place in there first year!, lol its a small world/internet! I was at whitworth park myself during my first year (£1.10 a pint in the on site bar :D), now down in falowfield. Currently am 1 of 4 people doing my specific course (computer systems engineering, i figure I've got to pass by default, it wouldn't look good for them to have a 25% failure rate) The renaming of the union has got to be one of the best things I've heard in a while!......there's deffinately potential to make a second attempt. Always thought it odd to have it named after a guy that built a bomb, considering almost every other union in the country is named after some great humanitarian (martin luther ect.) i think Bruce Willis fits the bill quite nicely considering how many times he's saved the world.

I have a horrible feeling you may be right.

_{My wife will kill me}

You already have a collection of scouts. Leverage them. ;)

I was kind of hoping somebody else would do the work...

sounds sweet! i'll be down in 22 units with bear wriggly wrolly!

how hard is it to get into m.i.t.? do you have to take honors classes?

Harvard Summer School

Thanks for the correction; it did look kind of familiar. Really cool stuff there: I have been interested in negative resistance for about 10 years now. That certainly "sparks" my curiousity :-)

curiosity even