8 Minutes 20 Seconds Exhibition

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Think Physics joined forces with The Holy Biscuit gallery on 15th and 16th of May to contribute to another action-packed NewcastleGateshead Late Shows. This collaboration was in honour of the International Year of Light and a timely addition to Northumbria University’s UKMHD Conference this May.

The result of the collaboration was 8 Minutes 20 Seconds, an exhibition presenting an artistic interpretation of the science behind the sun. The 8 Minutes 20 Seconds refers to the time it takes for light from the Sun to reach the earth.

The exhibition featured Helen Schell’s large scale optical illusions exploring the solar eclipse and John Jo Murray’s scientific sculpture, exploring how light can create subtle changes in colour and reflections. Sarah Davis’ work explored our understanding of the world from the prehistoric era through to the present through bold motifs and colours to chart the Earth’s development and relationship to the sun. While, Emily Simpson looked at how camera filters process light differently from the human eye, exploring the impact of the sun on technology.

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The exhibition was interspersed with interactive science exhibits and texts curated by Think Physics and Northumbria University MSc Science Communications students Jacalyn Laird, Jane Shearer and Lucy Mace, who focused on how the sun creates light and how we interact with it. During the Late Shows the students guided visitors round the interactive elements of the exhibition ensuring the scientific content of the exhibition was accurate and engaging. The exhibition was enhanced by a number of events, including an opening for members of the UKMHD Conference, an Art & Science discussion evening and a visit from St Catherine’s Primary School.

All photos by A Baker Photos.

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The show has received over 1000 visitors and had some fantastic feedback from visitors:

“Fantastic! Great ideas linking art and science with some beautiful artwork and interactive exhibits”

“Informative, interesting, enjoyable. Thank you”

“Creativity and excellence – with great, clever and interactive displays.

 

You can read more about the Think Physics and Holy Biscuit collaboration in NARC Magazine.

#girlswithtoys

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Yesterday, National Public Radio in the US published an interview with an astronomer, in which he’s quoted saying:

“Many scientists, I think, secretly are what I call ‘boys with toys’.”

Many other scientists are, of course, not boys at all. But they still have toys, and for the last eleven hours or so Twitter has been awash with fantastic photos of scientists, grouped under #girlswithtoys. There are lots of telescopes:

…there are plenty of other bits of apparatus and equipment:

I have no idea what a dual intracellular amp is, but it’s clearly making someone happy.

Then there are the not-really-instruments-just-cool-toys:

Drop whatever you’re doing and spend a few minutes scrolling through the #girlswithtoys stream (see also the live feed). It’s a glorious depiction of scientists doing what they love, with the tools and instruments of their work.

(top image from this tweet – who doesn’t love a spot of Antarctic heli-fishing?)

Update, 11am: One of the most remarkable photographs is this:

Margaret Hamilton during the Apollo Program (NASA / WikiMedia Commons)

Margaret Hamilton during the Apollo Program (NASA / WikiMedia Commons)

I’d never heard of Margaret Hamilton, which seems outrageous given that she was the lead flight software engineer on the Apollo programme. That is: the code written by her team landed men on the moon. In the final moments before touchdown, the Apollo 11 Lunar Module computer was swamped with excess data and pushed beyond its limits. It’s a fairly standard story in software engineering circles about how the development team anticipated such a situation and had built a system that could tolerate it. Their foresight avoided calamity.

I’ve read the story many times, but I’ve never heard it mentioned that Hamilton led that development group, nor that she coined the very term ‘software engineering.’ Her Wikipedia page is awesome.

The Young Engineer Design and Technology Competition

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Northumbria University are delighted to be once again supporting the annual ‘Young Engineer Design and Technology Competition’ held at the Discovery Museum, Newcastle and organised by Hexham Rotary Club on Tuesday, 2nd July 2015.

This is a fantastic opportunity for students who are submitting GCSE or GCE Design or Technology examination projects to showcase their work to judges which, has in the past included entries from: graphics, materials, textiles, electronics, systems, engineering and food technology.

Students do need to attend schools in Northumberland, North Tyneside or Newcastle to enter and and can expect to compete for student prizes of £150 and school prizes (£350), as well as other awards.

Teachers: If you would be interested in submitting entries or would like further information about the competition, please email Bryan Bell (Hexham Rotary) brian.bell@btbell.co.uk  or alternatively you can download further details below:

YEDT Further Information

YEDT Entry Form 2015

Deadline for entries: Friday 12th June 2015

A-level Subject Take-up

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Ofsted have published an analysis of the numbers and proportions of girls and boys studying A-level subjects in England:

Until now there has been no single source of data for schools or inspectors to consult that sets out the numbers and proportions of girls and boys that progress from Year 11 to AS levels and then from AS to A level. This report provides that data, so that schools can compare their own performance against the national picture. Several subjects have significantly unequal numbers of girls and boys, for example physics.

Do read the report for the figures in detail, but Dom McDonald, Programme Manager, Outreach at the Royal Society of Chemistry has the STEM subjects summary:

Also on Twitter, he went on to note that the most extreme subject appears to be Computing, with a girls:boys ratio of 0.09:1.

Yikes.

The Magic of Light Boxes

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Think Physics, and Think Club members, had a great time at Maker Faire UK this weekend.  As you may have seen from our blog, we’ve been creating and making things for Maker Faire for a few weeks.

Here are some of the creations from our wall of light boxes.  There was an ever-changing parade of light sculptures on the wall, although some boxes lasted a little longer than others.

If you came along, can you spot your creation?

The Wonders of the Sun

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Think Club 0 – Maker Week, day 5+1. Pendulum predicament edition

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Maker Week may be over, but there’s plenty of making still to be done. You’ll notice from the picture above that I’ve been hacking away at the turntables again. Meanwhile, Joe now has a refined version of our LED lamps sorted out. It’s pretty neat, and bright enough, but we’ve counted up and realised we’ve the means to make a lot more lamps. Tomorrow is likely to see some production-line soldering.

The biggest challenge of the day, however, has been the pendulum:

ThinkClub0_Build-Week1-Monday_again-1

Joe is right to look pensive. We wired things up, swung a kettle, heard chime roughly when we’d expect them – then, just as we started to celebrate, we noticed that the chimes were, in fact, coming entirely at random. Drat.

We scratched our heads, rewired, tried again. It was worse.

We scowled at it, tried something else. That didn’t work either.

Eventually… we ate some of the biscuits. Subsequently, we think we have a solution. It’s a bit touch-and-go, but close enough that we reckon we can afford to sleep tonight. We’ll pick up the pieces in the morning and see if our current thinking is correct.

>ulp<

Think Club 0 – Maker Week, day 5

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Biscuits.

We forgot the biscuits.

Whilst you’re all pondering how that could possibly happen – and today, being the end of maker week, I had some really good biscuits, let me tell you – here’s what we did:

Above, the Think Club crew beavering away. I have absolutely rubbish photos of the incredibly intricate soldering work being done to assemble our advanced lights for Light Play. So I won’t show you the photos, but I will tell you about the lights, since they’re works of art. We have Trinkets – which are like half an Arduino, if that means anything to you – powered off a single 1.5V cell via a step-up board that works, as far as we can tell, via unicorns. The Trinket drives a handful of Neopixel RGB LEDs, and a couple of controls allow you to set the colour, or the rate change of colour. It’s all terribly neat and self-contained, and particularly pretty. Pictures next week, promise.

Meanwhile, we assembled the pendulum frame and finally got around to hanging the pendulums. Pendula. Penduloptera. Whatever:

Pendulum hanging

What really surprised us was that our frame was clearly wonky. Like: properly out-of-kilter. With trepidation we offered up a spirit level to the cross-member, and found this:

Level

Huh. Well, that’s fine, then. I guess.

The pendulum array now looks like this:

Pendulums hung

OK, so there’s one missing from the end, and the lengths aren’t sorted, and we need to tidy lots of things up, and we haven’t got the instrumentation in place, and we have yet to even begin the essential stage which is ‘flashing light optimisation’… but you get the idea. Suddenly, the undergrads revising for exams in the quiet work area just outside Think Lab went from wholly indifferent to ‘ooh, shiny!’ and started talking to us. Which was nice, and gave us a taste of how people might respond when they see this thing in place at the Faire next weekend.

So – huge thanks to the Think Club 0 crowd for their endeavours this week, they’ve done a heap of work and have been delightful company to boot. The bulk of the work for both projects is done; next week Andrew, Joe, Sarah and myself have a bunch of finishing-up to do, then… dun-dun-duuuuurrrrrr: Maker Faire UK. Woohoo!

We also seem to have a gigantic pile of biscuits to scoff. What a disaster that is.

Think Club 0 – Maker Week, day 4

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Maker week was busy enough today that I mostly took photos of the empty lab at the end of the day, like the abandoned soldering table at the top of this post. However, here’s Jess in flow making turntables, and Chris in deep code:

Turntables were most definitely on the menu today, with Jess, Lauren and Sarah completing at least a dozen:

Turntable assembly line

We’ve also made significant progress on the rest of the light wall, and there’s been lots of marking up of the pendulum frame. Also, on my way home tonight:

Kettles

Oh yes. We have pendulum bobs. Though I think the people in the queue behind me at the checkout were a little confused about why I was buying quite so many kettles.

Tomorrow: bringing it all together. >ulp<

Think Club 0 – Maker Week, day 3

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A quiet day today, with family commitments reducing the turn-out. Nevertheless, Joe’s particularly proud of getting the colour-changing lamps to work. My still photo above really doesn’t do them justice.

Pendulum frame

We’ve assembled the two ends of the pendulum support structure. Look at the size of that thing!

turntable

We now have a working turntable design which is slow enough to look good. It’s a bit bodged but works surprisingly well, particularly since it relies on a chopstick as a key component. I’m unreasonably delighted by that.

Meanwhile, Chris was immersed in Sonic Pi, the Scalextric was briefly up-and-running, and Andrew’s done a heap of calculations around the pendulums, working out what notes we should go for and hacking my simulation code so we’ve had a bit of a listen. It’s much less irritating than it was.

Oh, and we’ve ordered another round of electronic bits, and most importantly restocked the biscuit supplies. With exciting new varieties, no less.

So tomorrow we’ve mass-production of turntables to arrange, lights to finish assembling, colour-changing light circuits to solder up, and pendulum bracing to sort. We’re hoping the Think Clubbers come back after their day off. Otherwise, a busy day will become a hectic day.