BSF2012 Saturday 8th September
At breakfast I was talking with Tim from York, Martin from Dundee and Derrick from Surrey about domestic water heating; How a lot of water is wasted waiting for the hot water to arrive, and then a lot of energy is wasted as the hot pipe heats the surrounding air. Tim proposed heating the water electrically at the tap, which gave rise to the notion of just one tap. I leapt on the idea to allow grey water systems to use the hot-water plumbing, thereby saving a third set of pipes being installed in houses around the country. We are already trained not to drink from the hot tap, so some of the public health problems with grey water are assuaged. May need a change in the building regulations, though.
Before the lectures began, I popped quickly into the "Strictly Engineering" poster exhibition, which has grown out of the "Perspectives" poster event of previous years. The engineers behind the posters were on hand to speak about and expand on their posters, but I found this format a bit awkward as they were hanging around and not letting me process the information on the poster before speaking to them. I was given an injection moulded magnifying glass made in the lab at Manchester University, to remind me of the work they are doing with super high precision mouldings. Another poster showed neutron bombardment NDT as an alternative to X-ray radiography.
"Forgotten knowledge:The discovery and loss of a cure for scurvy" was an entertaining account of the various times through history when the importance of fresh fruit was recognised and then discounted, going back 400 years. It was shown that lemons allowed Britain's navy to besiege Napoleon, where they would otherwise have become too sick to fight. The speaker made the point that the advent of the steam ship in the 1880s reduced voyage times so that there was not time to get scurvy, and the need was lost until arctic explorers again started making voyages of over 6 weeks.
"The Charles Darwin award lecture:The surprising secrets of giant land animals" was begun outside with a 1/3rd life size T-Rex roaming around the plaza, thankfully not eating people. The lecture proper showed the mechanics of carrying a heavy weight and the limits of muscle power and bone strength. We were shown a video of elephants running, always with one foot on the ground, and how the possible angles that a T-Rex leg could move in had been whittled down by computer experiment to a subset of likely modes, limited to 15mph.
http://www.millenniumfx.co.uk/showreels/animatronic-dinosaur-suit
http://www.rvc.ac.uk/staff/jhutchinson.cfm
From the Darwin lecture I walked into Aberdeen, where there was "Science in the Quad" of Robert Gordon University, another beautiful old building. I missed the world bubble blowing record attempt, but spoke to members of the Aberdeen Amateur Radio Society who were operation an HF radio set from inside a tent, with a 40m square antenna. This apparently was optimised for a wide spread rather than extreme distance. I feared the hobby might be dying out with internet communication so easy, but they seemed to use both together, logging their calls on a laptop.
I carried on to the Beach Ballroom, where the Techfest family exhibition was hosted. I saw again the Solar Spark team with their bicycle powered plasma ball and solar powered toy helicopter, as well as examples of silicon crystal and dye-sensitised PV cells. No-one there knew when I asked what voltage each cell produced. I have heard criticism of commercial installations where the inverter represented a big power loss, and a DC bus around the house might be useful. One of their bicycles had got its instrumentation wires caught in the chain, and was withdrawn from use. I suggested they find a Halfords to buy new speaker wire (for that is what they had chosen).
I saw Bee-bots - floor crawling robots to teach young children basic programming, which was fun. I talked to an arctic researcher who told me from first hand experience how the polar ice has retreated. It is now impossible to walk from Canada to the North Pole.
Techfest continued into the leisure centre, where I saw Steff again (my quiz team-mate) doing her thing teaching kids biology.
I left the science and went paddling in the North Sea, walking barefoot along the beach to dry off. It had been gloriously sunny every day except one shower briefly.
My walk home took me through a retail park, but the Halfords was shut by then and no use to the Solar Sparkers.
I called in at the box-office in the hope that a ticket for the evening show "What's the point" had been returned. It was sold-out in the morning. I arrived a just the right time, for they had decided that the few complimentary bursary tickets should be given to anyone interested. My evening plan became concrete! I walked off campus to The Bobbin, a Scream pub. I ate a burger, listened to their loud but tolerable music and watched Red-Bull TV (amazing physical feats on foot, bike, plane) before heading back onto the campus Spiegeltent. Timandra Harkness and Andrew Pontzen vied for the position of host, Timandra centre stage but Andrew (on his piano) really in control having written all the questions for the quiz. It was loosely "Have I Got News For You"/"Q.I." format, but as the evening progressed it got sillier and more anarchic. I was checking for fire extinguishers and fire exits when they started playing with methanol to demonstrate the beginning of the universe, and I think they are still cleaning orange goo off the tent floor now.
Before the lectures began, I popped quickly into the "Strictly Engineering" poster exhibition, which has grown out of the "Perspectives" poster event of previous years. The engineers behind the posters were on hand to speak about and expand on their posters, but I found this format a bit awkward as they were hanging around and not letting me process the information on the poster before speaking to them. I was given an injection moulded magnifying glass made in the lab at Manchester University, to remind me of the work they are doing with super high precision mouldings. Another poster showed neutron bombardment NDT as an alternative to X-ray radiography.
"Forgotten knowledge:The discovery and loss of a cure for scurvy" was an entertaining account of the various times through history when the importance of fresh fruit was recognised and then discounted, going back 400 years. It was shown that lemons allowed Britain's navy to besiege Napoleon, where they would otherwise have become too sick to fight. The speaker made the point that the advent of the steam ship in the 1880s reduced voyage times so that there was not time to get scurvy, and the need was lost until arctic explorers again started making voyages of over 6 weeks.
"The Charles Darwin award lecture:The surprising secrets of giant land animals" was begun outside with a 1/3rd life size T-Rex roaming around the plaza, thankfully not eating people. The lecture proper showed the mechanics of carrying a heavy weight and the limits of muscle power and bone strength. We were shown a video of elephants running, always with one foot on the ground, and how the possible angles that a T-Rex leg could move in had been whittled down by computer experiment to a subset of likely modes, limited to 15mph.
http://www.millenniumfx.co.uk/showreels/animatronic-dinosaur-suit
http://www.rvc.ac.uk/staff/jhutchinson.cfm
From the Darwin lecture I walked into Aberdeen, where there was "Science in the Quad" of Robert Gordon University, another beautiful old building. I missed the world bubble blowing record attempt, but spoke to members of the Aberdeen Amateur Radio Society who were operation an HF radio set from inside a tent, with a 40m square antenna. This apparently was optimised for a wide spread rather than extreme distance. I feared the hobby might be dying out with internet communication so easy, but they seemed to use both together, logging their calls on a laptop.
I carried on to the Beach Ballroom, where the Techfest family exhibition was hosted. I saw again the Solar Spark team with their bicycle powered plasma ball and solar powered toy helicopter, as well as examples of silicon crystal and dye-sensitised PV cells. No-one there knew when I asked what voltage each cell produced. I have heard criticism of commercial installations where the inverter represented a big power loss, and a DC bus around the house might be useful. One of their bicycles had got its instrumentation wires caught in the chain, and was withdrawn from use. I suggested they find a Halfords to buy new speaker wire (for that is what they had chosen).
I saw Bee-bots - floor crawling robots to teach young children basic programming, which was fun. I talked to an arctic researcher who told me from first hand experience how the polar ice has retreated. It is now impossible to walk from Canada to the North Pole.
Techfest continued into the leisure centre, where I saw Steff again (my quiz team-mate) doing her thing teaching kids biology.
I left the science and went paddling in the North Sea, walking barefoot along the beach to dry off. It had been gloriously sunny every day except one shower briefly.
My walk home took me through a retail park, but the Halfords was shut by then and no use to the Solar Sparkers.
I called in at the box-office in the hope that a ticket for the evening show "What's the point" had been returned. It was sold-out in the morning. I arrived a just the right time, for they had decided that the few complimentary bursary tickets should be given to anyone interested. My evening plan became concrete! I walked off campus to The Bobbin, a Scream pub. I ate a burger, listened to their loud but tolerable music and watched Red-Bull TV (amazing physical feats on foot, bike, plane) before heading back onto the campus Spiegeltent. Timandra Harkness and Andrew Pontzen vied for the position of host, Timandra centre stage but Andrew (on his piano) really in control having written all the questions for the quiz. It was loosely "Have I Got News For You"/"Q.I." format, but as the evening progressed it got sillier and more anarchic. I was checking for fire extinguishers and fire exits when they started playing with methanol to demonstrate the beginning of the universe, and I think they are still cleaning orange goo off the tent floor now.