I have found this one pretty helpful:

http://www.graphpad.com/quickcalcs/Molarityform.cfm

Although, i find it best to do the calculation yourself too, like the way Tricky suggested, just to confirm your result

i know exactly how you feel. you won't know if something is fundamentally impossible or not until you delve in and try, that's the risk you run when you do something that has never been done before. Sometimes it seems biologically impossible to get the result you need, and no matter what you try, its becomes like banging your head against a brick wall.

Neither of my supervisors are lab people either, so i do feel like i am on my own a great deal of the time. I can't really go to them with my problems, because they won't understand - it's not their field of expertise. And i don't have the knowledge or experience to come up with solutions myself.

i have decided things need to change. My lack of expertise + my lack of training + the wrong supervisor for my project + being in the wrong lab + the large risk of my project failing = a recipe for disaster. i am seriously looking into doing my lab work as a visitor in another lab.

Hey. A journal club is where one person (the 'chair') chooses one or two recent papers/articles from a journal that is relevant to a particular theme. The paper is distributed to various people within the research group/school/faculty to give everyone a chance to read it. Then everyone meets to discuss the paper.

They are usually informal discussions over lunch, and hardly anyone ever reads the papers!

ofcourse, no one explained any of this to me when i started, so when i had to lead a journal club a few months ago, i made a powerpoint presentation explaining the details of a study INSTEAD of distributing the paper to everyone...i made a royal tit of myself, twas highly embarassing!

i understand. It's highly insulting to have someone think they know how to run your life better than you...it's like having someone come into your house and start rearranging the furniture because they think they think its better their way - makes you want to kick em out!

That's a lovely story! I'm very happy for you.

Maybe you should think about going to see your careers office for a careers interview...they almost never give you the solution you are looking for, but a careers interview is like having someone say: "everything will be OK"

the UKGRAD people have a good reputation for careers workshops etc.

you might want to try this website:

http://evol.mcmaster.ca/brian/evoldir.html

Click on Jobs. I think its mainly academic jobs, but there might be something in there that will allow you to use your evolutionary background.

i know the feeling. Why can't people be perfect???

D'oh! Sorry, let me start again...

For large bodies of text, Times New Roman is the way to go. The serifs (little horizontal sticky-out bits on the top and bottom of letters) help the human eye link the words together. The reader can view the text as a series of lines.

Fonts like Arial are good for blocks of text, e.g. on a poster. The lack of serifs (e.g. THIS font) make the human eye scan the text, rather than viwing the text as a series of lines.

Hope that's helpful...and i hope it makes sense!

For large bodies of text, Times New Roman is the way to go. The serifs (little horizontal sticky-out bits on the top and bottom of letters, like THIS font) help the human eye link the words together. The reader can view the text as a series of lines.

Fonts link Arial are good for blocks of text, e.g. on a poster. The lack of serifs make the human eye scan the text, rather than viwing the text as a series of lines.

Hope that's helpful...and i hope it makes sense!

In my experience, EVERYONE will give you a different piece of advice when it comes to deciding whether to do a masters degree or not. I eventually came to the conclusion that everyone has their own personal reasons for doing a masters (nor not). In other words: ignore everyone's advice and decide what a masters degree would mean to YOU!

I have tried so hard to take everyone's advice about not letting your PhD take over; i've made time for hobbies; i try to balance all my activities etc. But my supervisor told me the other day that i need to be putting in more hours in the lab. To actually acheive the aims of the project, i need to do rediculous hours in the lab, which leaves no time for all the other things i want/need to do.

it seems that if i want a PhD, i have to actually ignore all the advice about giving yourself a break. Pretty depressing, really!

Try Cranfield University. Its a postgrad-only uni in Milton Keynes. I know they do masters degrees in CFD, so there's presumably some CFD assocciated research

Yeah, that's perfectly normal at the begining. I think all the 'graduate key-skills' malarky is a pretty recent thing. I think the research councils want the next generation of postgrads to be more well-rounded, with so called 'transferable skills'. This basically means you get less time to do your actual research - much to the dissaproval of your supervisor.

It is pretty sh***y, but its something all postgrads have to put up with these days. It'll be like this for the first 4, maybe 5 months.

Hope you find some solace in the fact that its NOT YOUR FAULT!!

try not to worry: this is a very common feeling! Lab work is an absolute joke - there may appear to be a small handful of variables to manipulate, but in reality its not as simple as that. There are SOOOO many little variables that can have an affect on your results (e.g. ambient temperature in the lab; where you sit to do the work in the lab; contamination from something living on your lab coat; the fact that you might have sneezed 5 minutes before setting up your experiments!)As juno said, they are silly little things.

it may not be ideal, but the only way to solve the problem is to do the lab work along side someone with more lab experience. I personally HATE doing this, because i feel like im a useless 12 year old child again! But in the end, you wont regret asking for help.

I don't know if this helps (please ignore me if it doesn't!) but i have the following posted up on my wall. It helps me find inspiration when it all gets too much for me...

"A PhD is an exhausting, emotional struggle. You are forced to confront all of your fears, insecurities and doubts you have about yourself and some how overcome them. It’s terrifying. A lot of bravery is required, which often goes unrecognised and unrewarded.

Facing your own personalised set of fears (or ‘demons’ if you want to be dramatic) is where the feeling of isolation comes from – the fact that they are YOUR fears.

Be brave. You know what you have to do – you know the right thing to do. Good luck."