6th of May, Imperial College graduate school hosted an entertaining event based around demonstrating chemical reactions. 'Experiments' was the first word that came to mind, but it probably wasn't the right one. It was a show more than anything else.
The demonstrators, with their tie dyed lab coats, are researchers based at Brighton University. Part of the night's event was to demonstrate an iPad application they have collaborated in producing: 'Theodore Gray, the Elements'. It is a periodic table, in the form of an interactive electronic book, with detailed animated pictures of each of the elements. It was beautiful enough to earn a couple of audible gasp from the younger members of the audience, especially when projected onto a large screen. Theodore Gray, I've learned, is some kind of mad scientist (by 'mad' I meant 'cool') who won an Ig Nobel for his 'periodic table', a piece of furniture filled with elements. His team have then been installing elemental exhibits in several museums in America.
Out of the three main branch of science (biology, chemistry, physics) which is the best to design a demonstration based show around? Physics is well in fashion these days, and that any geek seems to be about to sprout endless facts about black holes and quantum mechanics, though personally I haven't seen many stage worthy demonstrations beyond gyroscopic effects and Van der Graaf generators. Showing off biology to people tends to involve demonstration of nature, perhaps with monkeys (or other cute things). In my opinion though chemistry puts on the best shows among the sciences, with its smokes, colour changes, and fireworks. And I feel that chemical reactions are still mysterious to a lot of people.
Yes, many of the reactions that night made a lot of sound. The first reaction was pretty enough, lighting up soap bubbles filled with hydrogen, which gave fireballs. It was when they fill the bubbles with hydrogen and oxygen in 'stoichiometric' amount it caused fireballs accompanied by impressive explosions, causing a child behind me to cower, and took all advice of covering of the ears seriously. Other explosions that evening include opening of a can of bake beans with lead azide (used commercially as a detonator) (an audience member was hit by some of the beans), liquid oxygen (I never knew that oxygen is actually blue), and something that involved carbon disulphide and nitrate of some sort. As for the colour changing reactions, the only one I remembered was an autocatalytic reaction (not really sure what that meant, and hence to me, mysterious) involving iodine, where a column of solution changed for cloudy to black to cloudy again repeatedly.
At the event, I noticed that the audience members were comprised of more than just postgrads. There were row full of kids, accompanied by their professor parents. Naturally, a fun evening of chemistry like this is designed for kids. I was thinking about opportunities: kids like that have enormous advantages, in terms of science at least, with caring and enthusiastic parents, who encourage kids by taking them to events such as these, as well as being able to explain what went on afterwards. No amount of government policy or external intervention can replicate this kind of help.
Saturday, 21 May 2011
Wednesday, 11 May 2011
Into Eternity
After the introduction given to us by the Finnish nuclear energy authority during the workshop in Helsinki about the radioactive waste repository in Olkiluoto, I was interested enough to do a quick Internet search on it, and I found that the Onkalo facility (the name of the repository) has its own documentary film, Into Eternity, where the people gave us the introduction were actually interviewed. I made myself watch that film: it's not often my work come into contact with popular culture.
First impression: the documentary is a lot bleaker and less entertaining than ones I am used to (ones about obese Americans or the economic crisis, for example). If the slow pace of the film meant to reflect upon the 100,000 year time scale of the problem, I sure can relate the gravity of the situation by the time it's over.
At the end of the day, I feel that it is a bit arrogant of use to design structures that will last for eternity. The Great Wall of China is merely a couple if thousand years old.
I have two main thoughts after watching the documentary.
First I liked the debate about if there should be 'markers' at Onkalo. Markers are signs placed around the site, indicating dangerous things are placed underground, and warn future generations not to dig there. It's designed so that that message should never be forget. On the other hand if the markers remain, but the message is lost (for example after 1000 years a whole new civilisation has replace the current population), all they will know is that something is buried there, and see little reason to not dig them up. A better solution would just to forget about the repository, consigning it to oblivion. It is a big world, and it's unlikely anyone would uncover it by chance.
Secondly, I think the narrator imagined future humans to be way too innocent, describing them as if they are child-like entities: 'stay away, and you will be safe'. I believe if future humans do one day uncover this cave-full of radioactive waste, if their technological level is a lot lower than ours (maybe a couple of ice ages and civilisations have come and past), it is likely that they would mine it. It is, after all, filled with valuable materials like copper, uranium, plutonium etc. Sure, close contact with whatever produced from the site would kill eventually, but I foresee the metal to be seen as 'magical', or even 'cursed', a whole religion would base around it.
"... And the ancients slain the god of the mountains for power, divided up her body and entombed the remains in these caves. See how the rocks are still warm to touch! It is said that whoever stays too long in these caves will incur the death curse of the god.."
But whatever the outcome, I suppose none of us will live long enough to find out.
First impression: the documentary is a lot bleaker and less entertaining than ones I am used to (ones about obese Americans or the economic crisis, for example). If the slow pace of the film meant to reflect upon the 100,000 year time scale of the problem, I sure can relate the gravity of the situation by the time it's over.
At the end of the day, I feel that it is a bit arrogant of use to design structures that will last for eternity. The Great Wall of China is merely a couple if thousand years old.
I have two main thoughts after watching the documentary.
First I liked the debate about if there should be 'markers' at Onkalo. Markers are signs placed around the site, indicating dangerous things are placed underground, and warn future generations not to dig there. It's designed so that that message should never be forget. On the other hand if the markers remain, but the message is lost (for example after 1000 years a whole new civilisation has replace the current population), all they will know is that something is buried there, and see little reason to not dig them up. A better solution would just to forget about the repository, consigning it to oblivion. It is a big world, and it's unlikely anyone would uncover it by chance.
Secondly, I think the narrator imagined future humans to be way too innocent, describing them as if they are child-like entities: 'stay away, and you will be safe'. I believe if future humans do one day uncover this cave-full of radioactive waste, if their technological level is a lot lower than ours (maybe a couple of ice ages and civilisations have come and past), it is likely that they would mine it. It is, after all, filled with valuable materials like copper, uranium, plutonium etc. Sure, close contact with whatever produced from the site would kill eventually, but I foresee the metal to be seen as 'magical', or even 'cursed', a whole religion would base around it.
"... And the ancients slain the god of the mountains for power, divided up her body and entombed the remains in these caves. See how the rocks are still warm to touch! It is said that whoever stays too long in these caves will incur the death curse of the god.."
But whatever the outcome, I suppose none of us will live long enough to find out.
Thursday, 5 May 2011
Thoughts on Geopolitics of Oil
“So why is this interesting?” asked my friend, whose interest is neither political nor technical, since I had rearrange meeting her in favour of going to a geopolitical lecture on energy security. I wish I could’ve given a more interesting answer, why I was even reading a paper by one of the speakers that day.
The talk was organised by the Imperial College Energy Society, titled Geopolitics of Oil and Energy Security: The UK, Middle East and Asia. There were 3 speakers, but their message was more or less the same. For example, John Michell is a researcher fellow at Chatham House (Chatham House is the current name for the Royal Institute of International Affairs), and the content of his talk can be found here.
The talk focused on oil, and message is this: the UK no longer produces as much oil as it used to. Just looking for the Middle East for oil may not be enough, because of political issues, and because Asia (or more specifically China) wants oil from them too. We may have to rely on Russia for energy, and that may have political implications. Interestingly the USA haven’t got that problem, because they have a huge store of natural gas, perhaps in the form of shale gas, but that’s another problem (the extraction of those kind of gas is very ‘leaky’, and very bad for the environment for carbon dioxide emission, as well as poisoning the land).
The interesting most part of the talk is the questions people asked at the end:
1) The speakers talked of political security (for example wars and stable governments etc.) and environmental concerns (“climate change”, mainly), so someone asked how those concerns are balanced? How the UK would, for example, chose between environmentally damaging by politically stable oil sources, such as Canadian Tar Sand, and politically bad sources like Libya?
2) If energy is so important to the economy, for example, to the USA, why haven’t they massively improved the efficiency of their transport? Incidentally we have been told that China sees it dependence on oil a massive security issue, and is vigorously pushing for electric cars...
3) How should the UK interact with corrupted but really oil rich nation (for example Nigeria, where because the whole of the GDP is basically from oil, their government really do only focus on serving the oil company and little else)? How can their policies compete with China’s non-intervention stance?
The talk was organised by the Imperial College Energy Society, titled Geopolitics of Oil and Energy Security: The UK, Middle East and Asia. There were 3 speakers, but their message was more or less the same. For example, John Michell is a researcher fellow at Chatham House (Chatham House is the current name for the Royal Institute of International Affairs), and the content of his talk can be found here.
The talk focused on oil, and message is this: the UK no longer produces as much oil as it used to. Just looking for the Middle East for oil may not be enough, because of political issues, and because Asia (or more specifically China) wants oil from them too. We may have to rely on Russia for energy, and that may have political implications. Interestingly the USA haven’t got that problem, because they have a huge store of natural gas, perhaps in the form of shale gas, but that’s another problem (the extraction of those kind of gas is very ‘leaky’, and very bad for the environment for carbon dioxide emission, as well as poisoning the land).
The interesting most part of the talk is the questions people asked at the end:
1) The speakers talked of political security (for example wars and stable governments etc.) and environmental concerns (“climate change”, mainly), so someone asked how those concerns are balanced? How the UK would, for example, chose between environmentally damaging by politically stable oil sources, such as Canadian Tar Sand, and politically bad sources like Libya?
2) If energy is so important to the economy, for example, to the USA, why haven’t they massively improved the efficiency of their transport? Incidentally we have been told that China sees it dependence on oil a massive security issue, and is vigorously pushing for electric cars...
3) How should the UK interact with corrupted but really oil rich nation (for example Nigeria, where because the whole of the GDP is basically from oil, their government really do only focus on serving the oil company and little else)? How can their policies compete with China’s non-intervention stance?
Tuesday, 3 May 2011
Thoughts on the Helsinki Workshop
I was at a project workshop in Helsinki, Finland. The main attraction of Helsinki is nature. The workshop venue is on an island about 20 minutes bus ride from Helsinki city centre. The project is on predicting how water flows behave in complicated underground environments over a very long period of time. The purpose of these predictions are for understanding what can happen if radioactive wastes are stored underground for a very long time.
The kind of radioactive wastes they are looking at are the “high level wastes”. They are “High level” because they are very radioactive and they get very hot, and they usually come from spent fuel from nuclear power plants. After various treatments, these wastes become hot, radioactive glass rods, stored in steel containers. These containers are then placed in underground tunnels forever. Water movement underground features heavily in the planning, despite the waste is locked in waterproof glass, sealed in steel canisters, stored in waterproof tunnels. “Forever” in this context means this is designed for couple of million years, and they wanted to know what would happen to the radioactive stuff after all those measures are breached. The host nation for the workshop gave a talk on the repository that will be constructed next year in Olkiluoto, which will be used to store wastes for the next one hundred years, before locked away for the next million. What got my attention is that the program is passed via an act of parliament, where it finally sink in to me that really a lot of it is a political issue. But how could it be? Hardly any governments are in power for centuries. I meant to watch a documentary film based on this storage facility before I write this, but I'll save that for a later post.
I remembered when hearing about the funding was cut for the Yucca Mountain (in Nevada) radioactive waste storage research project this year. Research there has been ongoing for decades, and the decision for the change in funding mainly coincide with the election: why should Nevada be responsible for wastes from the East Coast?
It does bother me a bit how these storage sites are chosen are based on a lot on political, rather than geological boundaries, and that the engineers/scientists designed them for all sorts of natural disasters and scenarios, but they are most likely get dug up by the next government.
The kind of radioactive wastes they are looking at are the “high level wastes”. They are “High level” because they are very radioactive and they get very hot, and they usually come from spent fuel from nuclear power plants. After various treatments, these wastes become hot, radioactive glass rods, stored in steel containers. These containers are then placed in underground tunnels forever. Water movement underground features heavily in the planning, despite the waste is locked in waterproof glass, sealed in steel canisters, stored in waterproof tunnels. “Forever” in this context means this is designed for couple of million years, and they wanted to know what would happen to the radioactive stuff after all those measures are breached. The host nation for the workshop gave a talk on the repository that will be constructed next year in Olkiluoto, which will be used to store wastes for the next one hundred years, before locked away for the next million. What got my attention is that the program is passed via an act of parliament, where it finally sink in to me that really a lot of it is a political issue. But how could it be? Hardly any governments are in power for centuries. I meant to watch a documentary film based on this storage facility before I write this, but I'll save that for a later post.
I remembered when hearing about the funding was cut for the Yucca Mountain (in Nevada) radioactive waste storage research project this year. Research there has been ongoing for decades, and the decision for the change in funding mainly coincide with the election: why should Nevada be responsible for wastes from the East Coast?
It does bother me a bit how these storage sites are chosen are based on a lot on political, rather than geological boundaries, and that the engineers/scientists designed them for all sorts of natural disasters and scenarios, but they are most likely get dug up by the next government.
Saturday, 30 April 2011
Foreword
I want to be a better writer, and following the advice that I was given, by almost everyone I asked, I need to write more.
It is not that I have never written anything: for my work and my studies I have produced various memos, reports, and even papers (well I was about to publish one, but I expect myself to write a couple more before the end of the PhD), but they tend not to be the kind of thing anyone would go near beyond for professional reasons. I started and abandoned several blogs in the past. Started because writing is a fine hobby, and it is always nice to pretend that someone actually cares about what you are up to enough to read about it. Abandoned due to the general lack of events in my life, and specifically how I come to realise that just writing pointlessly about nothing is a little boring.
Last December, I went to a rather big physical science conference, mainly on the earth sciences, in San Francisco (AGU). Just to clarify here, my expertise in the earth science is rather limited ("What is a rock anyway?"), my PhD is on rock behaviours, but so far I've been managing without knowing any geology. Most of the sessions were rather involved: I found that unless you have at least a postgraduate level of understanding of the certain topic presented, you won't get much out of it. Determined to make the most out of the conference as possible, I find myself gravitated towards many of the panel and workshop sessions with topics I would at least have a chance to understand: science and communications.
I remembered that I was rather inspired by many of those talks, I can't remember the specifics (I have made many notes, but the device I made those notes on decided to eat all my notes from between the months of December and February) I did remember about that one talk on battling climate skeptics, about how global warming has become a political issue, how if you're a republican or religious you are more likely to have climate skeptic view, and how the whole room, and the science community in general, is full of lefties and atheists.
It is not that I have never written anything: for my work and my studies I have produced various memos, reports, and even papers (well I was about to publish one, but I expect myself to write a couple more before the end of the PhD), but they tend not to be the kind of thing anyone would go near beyond for professional reasons. I started and abandoned several blogs in the past. Started because writing is a fine hobby, and it is always nice to pretend that someone actually cares about what you are up to enough to read about it. Abandoned due to the general lack of events in my life, and specifically how I come to realise that just writing pointlessly about nothing is a little boring.
Last December, I went to a rather big physical science conference, mainly on the earth sciences, in San Francisco (AGU). Just to clarify here, my expertise in the earth science is rather limited ("What is a rock anyway?"), my PhD is on rock behaviours, but so far I've been managing without knowing any geology. Most of the sessions were rather involved: I found that unless you have at least a postgraduate level of understanding of the certain topic presented, you won't get much out of it. Determined to make the most out of the conference as possible, I find myself gravitated towards many of the panel and workshop sessions with topics I would at least have a chance to understand: science and communications.
I remembered that I was rather inspired by many of those talks, I can't remember the specifics (I have made many notes, but the device I made those notes on decided to eat all my notes from between the months of December and February) I did remember about that one talk on battling climate skeptics, about how global warming has become a political issue, how if you're a republican or religious you are more likely to have climate skeptic view, and how the whole room, and the science community in general, is full of lefties and atheists.
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