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Royal Institution Christmas Lectures 2016 - BBC Four |
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#101 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Nov 2001
Location: Bolton. lancs
Posts: 5,746
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Quote:
I wonder why he was chosen then. You can never tell these days.
Myself, I suspect there's some sort of panel within the RI that decides what the topic for this year's lectures are going to be, then they look for UK academics who are known in the field and ask them if they'd be interested. Maybe they end up with a short list that they then screen test with? but that's just conjecture. If anyone does know, I'd be interested to find out. |
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#102 |
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Buckingham
Posts: 28,534
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Would be better to canvass the usual academic institutions for proposals for a suitable topic from an acknowledged expert. Like a research grant application if you like but with different criteria used to decide which one to run with.
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#103 |
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Join Date: Dec 2009
Posts: 25,458
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Would be better to canvass the usual academic institutions for proposals for a suitable topic from an acknowledged expert. Like a research grant application if you like but with different criteria used to decide which one to run with.
Perhaps one year they should try a professional TV science presenter rather than an academic? There will be moans but who cares if they can get the subject over to the audience. |
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#104 |
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Join Date: Nov 2015
Posts: 2,058
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I would think it would be better to get a recommendation after an academic is seen doing a lecture, presentation or whatever and being to get over complicated subjects to a mixed ability audience rather than looking for some knowledgeable on a subject then see if he is a good talker. There are a lot more clever scientists than scientists who can do a good lecture, in many ways the ability to talk is more important than being an expert researcher.
Perhaps one year they should try a professional TV science presenter rather than an academic? There will be moans but who cares if they can get the subject over to the audience. |
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#105 |
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Buckingham
Posts: 28,534
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Are we seeing the consequences of research grants and university posts being conditional on the academic doing some teaching even if they are patently not up to it?
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#106 |
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Join Date: Dec 2009
Posts: 25,458
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Are we seeing the consequences of research grants and university posts being conditional on the academic doing some teaching even if they are patently not up to it?
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#107 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Apr 2016
Location: Lichfield
Posts: 817
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Off topic: the 1977 and 1978 lectures are available on the RI website but not most of the others since then. I think it's a pity that all of them since the 1970s aren't available in some place or other. Incidentally, I've got the 1997 lectures on videotape somewhere, I'll have to dig it out.
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#108 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: London
Posts: 4,469
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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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#109 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Nov 2015
Posts: 2,058
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Don't tell apple that, we will have invisible phones 'we made it so thin and revolutionary, you can't even see it'
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#110 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Dec 2004
Posts: 21,643
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Quote:
Off topic: the 1977 and 1978 lectures are available on the RI website but not most of the others since then. I think it's a pity that all of them since the 1970s aren't available in some place or other. Incidentally, I've got the 1997 lectures on videotape somewhere, I'll have to dig it out.
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#111 |
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Forum Member
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Lincolnshire
Posts: 223
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Quote:
really well come you don't get any from working-class areas??
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