Solar panels - at last, some data!

The RSPB nature reserve at Leighton Moss near Lancaster has had 10 solar panels on the roof for the last 6 and 1/2 years. In that time, it has generated 8749 kWh of electricity, according to the display. So that's about 1300 kWh per year. Which could be worth at least £100 of electricity per year.

I wonder how much they cost to install?






The low power rating also raises questions, because 0.13kW would only run light bulbs or TV sets - things that aren't designed to produce heat. However, if the panels just add to the total electricity coming into the house, meaning that less is taken from the grid, then perhaps they will provide an interesting alternative.

Wigton church stained glass

Tomorrow Melvyn Bragg is doing a talk about the new stained glass windows that he commissioned for St Mary's. It's part of the festivities for the switching on of the Christmas lights. If you haven't seen them, yet you've missed out. They must be the best modern stained glass in the country, in the opinion of this observer. They were designed by Brian Campbell, who used to teach art at school.

The window in the picture has views of school and other recognisable buildings in Wigton. But it also rectifies a particular physics problem: it has the rainbow colours in the correct order.

The second picture here shows the older stained glass above the altar. There is also a rainbow on it. The colours are in the WRONG ORDER! And I have to look at it every week! I'd like to think that this is evidence that physics education in Wigton has improved in the last century!

Horizon tonight

Horizon tonight on BBC2 9pm to 10pm will be about quantum physics. You should watch it.

It will be on the BBC iplayer all week.

My trip to London

I was invited to represent the school at this symposium at Imperial College. Professor Harry Elliot was a student at this school in the 1930s. His name appears 3 times on the honours board in the library.

I got to find out about his start in cosmic ray research and how he then built a whole research team at Imperial College, London. He became one of the key people in European space research, sitting on committees that planned and carried out scientific space missions. I discovered that he had a key involvement in several things that I have taught.

He was responsible for the quenching agent in a Geiger Muller tube.

He was involved in planning the mission that produced the gamma ray photograph of the Milky Way that I use with year 10.

The number of professors in attendance shows that he commanded enormous respect.

I'm deeply grateful to Professor Steve Scwartz and Professor Andre Balogh for inviting me.

Try this link for further details of their research programme

http://www.sp.ph.ic.ac.uk/~balogh/history.htm

Melvyn Bragg's book about science

Lord Bragg of Wigton, Melvyn Bragg, produced a book about science 10 years ago. It is basically the transcipt of a radio series he did on famous scientists. He interviewed a lot of interesting current scientists. It is an excellent study of the way in which science works. It's called "On Giants' Shoulders" (based on a quotation from Sir Isaac Newton) and there is a copy to borrow in Wigton Town Library.

I was particularly interested in what he said in the introduction to the book: "Although I greatly enjoyed maths at school, and at one stage wanted to take it in the sixth form, I was never enticed into physics. This is not to blame the teachers, for, soon after World War II and in a small Northern grammar school, teachers, especially it seemed in physics, came and went at some speed." That's our school! Hopefully he'd be enticed into physics if he were here now.

This is a great book and you ought to read it. I'd also recommend looking at the new stained glass windows in the church installed by Melvyn Bragg to spot all the amazing little Wigton details.

My letter was published

My letter about David MacKay's book was published in full in The Cumberland News last Friday (6 November). It's not on the web version, so you'll have to have bought a copy but in due course I will put a copy up in the lab!

Searching for uranium in Dumfries

I went to A spot below Criffel in Dumfries to look for uranium salts in the rocks. Geologists found the salts at Southwick cliffs in the 1960s. I found a paper about it on the Internet. The Geiger counter reached 3 times the normal background, but it was terribly overgrown and I was not able to locate the original excavations or those of 1990. This is what it looks like:

My trip to Schiehallion

Horizon BBC 2 Tuesday 3 November

Horizon this week is about black holes. You should watch it.

BBC2 Tuesday 3 Nov at 9pm for an hour. If you miss it, it'll be on the BBC i-player for a week.