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Royal Institution Christmas Lectures 2016 - BBC Four


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Old 26-12-2016, 19:37
Paul_Culloty
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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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Old 26-12-2016, 20:15
Brian The Dog
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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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Old 26-12-2016, 20:16
jonbwfc
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Loved the Rube Goldberg demo...
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Old 26-12-2016, 20:16
Brian The Dog
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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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Old 26-12-2016, 20:17
gomezz
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I wonder if he will demonstrate the challenges facing modern batteries designers using a Note 7?
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Old 26-12-2016, 20:19
Brian The Dog
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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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Old 26-12-2016, 20:19
jonbwfc
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I wonder if he will demonstrate the challenges facing modern batteries designers using a Note 7?
They're quite big on explosions in the RICL's .

Actually it's a valid topic to talk about too - energy density and all that.
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Old 26-12-2016, 20:23
Brian The Dog
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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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Old 26-12-2016, 20:26
mark_beach
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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.
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?
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Old 26-12-2016, 20:34
Brian The Dog
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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?
Well yes and no in no particular order:

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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Old 26-12-2016, 20:40
jonbwfc
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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.
Fuel cells are much better than batteries in that sense. But neither are near fossil fuels IIRC. Cold Fusion is NOT a thing

'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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Old 26-12-2016, 20:45
Brian The Dog
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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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Old 26-12-2016, 20:47
Brian The Dog
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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.
Yup! So cold fusion is an even longer way off from being a thing.
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Old 26-12-2016, 20:48
jonbwfc
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So the're using... electric lights.. to demonstrate... solar power cells?
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Old 26-12-2016, 20:54
Brian The Dog
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So the're using... electric lights.. to demonstrate... solar power cells?
Yes! Two big energy guzzling halogen lamps and a hugh solar cell mat that Maplin shoppers would die for, just to run a small motor.

Efficiency Rating: -10,000,000
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Old 26-12-2016, 20:58
jonbwfc
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Power the world.. with cake!
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Old 26-12-2016, 21:00
Brian The Dog
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Power the world.. with cake!
Cake does contain a lot of sugar so just add liquid oxygen and a match and see it released.

Far more tastier than pants!
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Old 26-12-2016, 21:14
_ben
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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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Old 26-12-2016, 22:37
Andrew1954
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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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Old 26-12-2016, 22:53
ednwireland
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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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Old 27-12-2016, 10:29
Horza's Drone
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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
Agreed that it was poor. There seemed to be no structure to it or any actual explanations. Having Dawkins on was just a waste of time too.

Last year's was much better!
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Old 27-12-2016, 11:30
Johnny_Sinclair
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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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Old 27-12-2016, 12:35
lundavra
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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.
Sending a kid up on the roof to read a meter which has a camera pointing at it anyway!
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Old 27-12-2016, 12:35
Brian The Dog
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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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Old 27-12-2016, 12:38
Brian The Dog
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Sending a kid up on the roof to read a meter which has a camera pointing at it anyway!
Yes in the past it would be a little bit more hand-on. The kid would be given the meter in the lecture hall and told apply it between here and here and tell us what the meter told them. So a bit more taking part.
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