Olympics

Whilst the Olympics is obviously all about hard work, individual skill and moments of glory, bits of it can still be pretty funny. Here we have a round-up of the five funniest photos of London 2012 so far.  

German diver Sascha Klein is clearly trying really hard in the Aquatics Centre in the Olympic Park (above).

After four days of near misses and disappointing performances, Team GB finally claimed their first gold medal yesterday. And, just like buses in London, you wait for ages and then two come along at once.

Gold in the Rowing

First to break Britain's duck were rowing pair Helen Glover and Heather Stanning. They set out as favourites, but with the weight of expectation from a whole nation they were under huge pressure. However, almost from the start it was clear they were feeling good, and just 250m into the 2000m race, they were miles ahead of their rivals. They carried it on and comfortably won Britain its first gold medal of the London 2012 Games, also becoming the first British female rowers to ever win an Olympic gold. After the race, Helen Glover revealed:

"We kidded ourselves that there was no pressure. The last thing we said to each other was 'it's just for us, it's just for us', but it was for the whole of the team and the whole of the country. Now we've finished we can say there was pressure; there was expectation. It's just brilliant. I hope the crowd really enjoyed today."

Meanwhile, Heather Stanning is already planning to return to her day job- in the army:

Welcome! As part of a series that keeps students up to date with international insights, current technology and popular culture, this week we're bursting at the seams with amazing hand picked content.

Print it in 3D

We live in remarkable times where technology advances at an unprecedented rate. Rapid prototyping or 3D printing to the layman (also known as additive printing) is beginning to branch out from design and manufacturing to different sectors and eventually our homes. Originally developed for creating product prototypes, a 3D printer takes a digital design and literally prints it out by constructing it layer by layer, just like the picture above. The ramifications for the future of commerce are epic. Find out more here. 

Two female swimmers have been attracting all the headlines in the Aquatics Centre at London 2012 over the last few days. One Chinese swimmer has broken world-records and set faster times than her male equivalents, whilst a Lithuanian has just won the first Gold medal her country has ever won in the pool. The truly extraordinary thing is they are 16 and 15-years-old respectively.

Ye Shiwen: Faster than the Men?

Chinese swimmer Ye Shiwen (pictured above left) shocked the world of swimming on Saturday when she smashed the world record for the 400m individual medley. She broke her own personal best by more than five seconds and, most incredibly, she swum the final 50m faster than the winner of the men's event. All this at 16-years-old.

However, her performances have been so astounding that some figures in swimming are questioning whether they are a little too good to be true. She is at the centre of a row over doping, with a top coach accusing her of taking performance-enhancing drugs, and others rushing to her defence.

With London 2012 underway, ForeignStudents.com Editor Andy describes his experience of one of the events live.

After applying for dozens of tickets for the London 2012 Olympics earlier this year, I got a grand total of two. They were for boxing at the ExCel Centre, and the big day finally came around yesterday.

With all the warnings of packed tubes and gridlocked streets, we were preparing for the worst. However, the trains all ran perfectly and we even got to pretend we were drivingone of them (as you should always do on the driverless DLR line- pictured below). Everything ran so smoothly that we even had time for a couple of pre-event pints after we arrived at ExCel an hour and a half early.