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Royal Institution Christmas Lectures 2016 - BBC Four |
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#1 |
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Royal Institution Christmas Lectures 2016 - BBC Four
After last year's talks by Kevin Wong on the challenges faced by astronauts in space, the 2016 three-lecture series, starting at 8 tonight, is presented by Saiful Islam and discusses energy. In "Supercharged: Fulling The Future", Mr Islam begins in a darkened lecture theatre, illuminated solely by a candle, and gradually builds up to advances in electricity over the centuries.
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#2 |
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Quite an interesting subject given that in today's society we need more and more power for things like mobile devices and of course electric cars.
Good to see if they have any ideas where they will get the extra energy needed in the very near future. |
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#3 |
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Loved the Rube Goldberg demo...
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#4 |
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Love all those devices that set off other devices and always wanted to make one my self but way too much bother setting up.
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#5 |
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I wonder if he will demonstrate the challenges facing modern batteries designers using a Note 7?
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#6 |
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You don't have lightening happening as a result of a thunder storm. Thunder is a result of the lightening in the first place.
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#7 |
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Quote:
I wonder if he will demonstrate the challenges facing modern batteries designers using a Note 7?
![]() .Actually it's a valid topic to talk about too - energy density and all that. |
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#8 |
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Quote:
I wonder if he will demonstrate the challenges facing modern batteries designers using a Note 7?
![]() But it does demonstrate that the energy from the battery can indeed be converted to heat. Quite a lot of heat. Too much heat, some say.
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#9 |
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Quote:
Quite an interesting subject given that in today's society we need more and more power for things like mobile devices and of course electric cars.
I think yule find we need less & less power nowadays for the new energy efficient devices. I'm no expert but I think electric cars use less & less power than their fossil fuel counterparts?
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#10 |
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Quote:
eh?
I think yule find we need less & less power nowadays for the new energy efficient devices. I'm no expert but I think electric cars use less & less power than their fossil fuel counterparts?With electric cars the BIG MAJOR problem has always been how to get more bang out of the battery without adding weight. (Like adding more batteries as you end up getting nowhere that way.) Whilst they have made some improvements in that field, they have hit a brick wall and can't seem to get over that big problem at the moment. Soooooo the only way to make electric cars viable is to try a reduce the amount of power they need to draw to do the work. Of course, again there is only so far you can go with that at the moment as well. What is needed therefore is a type of energy that produces far more power than is weighs. Something like cold fusion. Same with a mobile phone: Screens are getting bigger and need more power to run them and yet even with modern batteries they still need to take up most of the phone case. If you invented a battery a tenth of the size you could then have ten times the power for the same size of battery we have today. So you could power larger screens or run you phone for longer. |
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#11 |
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What is needed therefore is a type of energy that produces far more power than is weighs. Something like cold fusion.
![]() 'Man burns pants on national television'. That's something I never thought I'd see. Oh God, fusion generators. They've been saying they'll solve our energy problems in 50 years for at least 50 years. |
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#12 |
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So cars of the future will have engines 10 times hotter than the sun.
What's the worst that could happen? ![]() That would put the Note 7 to shame. |
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#13 |
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Oh God, fusion generators. They've been saying they'll solve our energy problems in 50 years for at least 50 years.
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#14 |
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So the're using... electric lights.. to demonstrate... solar power cells?
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#15 |
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So the're using... electric lights.. to demonstrate... solar power cells?
Efficiency Rating: -10,000,000
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#16 |
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Power the world.. with cake!
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#17 |
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Power the world.. with cake!
Far more tastier than pants! |
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#18 |
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As an engineer, I despair at scientists using the concepts of energy and power interchangeably as if they were the same thing. Despite explicitly pointing out that it's important not to do this, the presenter then went on to use the terms interchangeably throughout the lecture, from an educational point of view this is unhelpful to put it mildly.
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#19 |
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I thought the lecture was very much below the high standards of the RI Christmas lectures. This is supposed to be a demonstration lecture. Sending children out of the lecture room to read a meter was particularly naff. The lecture seemed to be disjointed, incoherent and the demonstrations poorly explained. Showing pre-made films inside a power station or what happens when you put someone inside a faraday cage seem to miss the point of a demonstration lecture. You might as well just film a documentary.
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#20 |
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thought it was a poor lecture demonstrations seemed to go bang rather than explain anything.
ignored the fact drax's biomass wood pellets are imported from canada and usa and made from native hardwoods in forests that took 100's to years to grow |
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#21 |
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Quote:
thought it was a poor lecture demonstrations seemed to go bang rather than explain anything.
ignored the fact drax's biomass wood pellets are imported from canada and usa and made from native hardwoods in forests that took 100's to years to grow Last year's was much better! |
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#22 |
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I still recall Eric Laithwaite's lecture back in the 60s & 70s.
This was when they carried out real hands on experiments and H&S was very far down on the agenda, hence the kids loved them.
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#23 |
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Quote:
I still recall Eric Laithwaite's lecture back in the 60s & 70s.
This was when they carried out real hands on experiments and H&S was very far down on the agenda, hence the kids loved them. |
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#24 |
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Had to chuckle every time he lit something, he put in a green lab coat.
Eye protection, yes but sod all the green lab coat is going to do! ![]() He did manage at the start to explain that whilst both contained potential chemical energy, a candle releases it very slow whilst gun cotton (Nitrocellulose) gives it all up in a split second; but after that it all got a bit fuzzy on what he was trying to say and demonstrate. Seemed to be a series of disjointed "Things that contain energy" and we already know they do. |
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#25 |
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Quote:
Sending a kid up on the roof to read a meter which has a camera pointing at it anyway!
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I think yule
find we need less & less power nowadays for the new energy efficient devices. I'm no expert but I think electric cars use less & less power than their fossil fuel counterparts?
This was when they carried out real hands on experiments and H&S was very far down on the agenda, hence the kids loved them.