I think we've found coal

We went to stay at the highest pub in Britain, set in bleak moorland just over the county boundary into Yorkshire. As you can see from the photograph, it was a mining inn. What was odd was that they were mining coal. I am struggling to think of a coal mine that high up. We walked along the Pennine Way for a couple of miles and found this black outcrop of rocks. I guess it must be coal. Closer inspection revealed poor shale not really good enough for burning, but look at the think layers of sandstone between the shales. This would suggest episodes of flooding washing sand across the swamps that would have provided the mud and vegetation for the black shales. Not really physics, I know, but I love geology too.

Cairngorm Mountain

We drove through the night on Friday to see rare wildlife in the woods at dawn. Mid-morning we were up watching the skiers on Cairngorm Mountain. They get them up the mountain with a funicular railway. You can see it snaking upm to the ski station on the second picture. In fact, there are two trains that are strung together on a long cable. One goes up whilst the other comes down. Hence gravity is doing a lot of the work of lifting the lower train as the upper train falls. The falling train gives its gravitational potential energy to the rising train. It is a single track but there is a short section of double track half way. There is no other place where they will meet because they are tied by a cable.

Sk8r Boi

We've bought two skateboards for the Physics Department to help us to demonstrate Newton's 3rd Law and the conservation of linear momentum. If you'd been in Silloth this afternoon you'd have seen Mrs B and me having our first ever goes on a skateboard. Deprived childhoods, I'm afraid. I want to learn to skateboard...can anyone help? The picture shows the bottom of one of the boards: 1. Another mess up with mass and weight. Oh dear. 2. I'm 65kg. This surely can't be right.

Not Brian Cox

The Brian Cox Wonders of the Universe programmes on Sunday nights have been brilliant. The second programme Stardust was probably the best documentary on Physics I've ever seen.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00zm833/Wonders_of_the_Universe_Stardust/
But you might have missed JimAl-Khalili on BBC4 on Monday night. He did a brilliant programme about why the sky is black at night even though the Universe is infinite in size. You should watch it! http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00yb59m/Everything_and_Nothing_Everything/

Estimation

There haven't been many posts recently. I've been very busy. Further to the last post - the estimation went like this:

We thought that there might be 100 trees per row and 100 rows, meaning that 10,000 trees had been cut down. It seems a lot.

Next estimate the height of the turbine in the picture and the length of one blade. This turbine is at Watchtree.

Estimating

My friend spotted this area of felled trees in the forest above Ennerdale. He challenged his children to estimate how many trees had been felled. Estimating is a particularly important skill in Engineering, but also in Physics. Have a go using the second, more detailed, picture. Let me know what you think.

Physics students write on windows

The window of the students cafe in the Particle Physics building at Oxford was covered in equations. I've been experimenting with board pens in my lab - but don't try this at home (or at school).