Physics

"Two hundred years after Volta, we finally understand what electricity is" stated just in 'Shock and Awe: the Story of Electricity' on 'Yesterday' channel just. They continued to explain it as flow of electrons.

BUT

Yesterday, do not recall the title, programme about Quantum Physics persuaded me that we do not know what an electron is, and showed some experiments to demonstrate that it certainly is NOT what we had thought that it was.

Ian't it good to explain something with constructs that we do not understand!

I don't have to understand how this works....LINK
but after over 50 yrs in engineering I have grown to love big machine and being in the presence of this one is on my bucket list

I visited this place last year and achieved another goal...

LINK

Electricity explained

I had one large colander, but that nice Mr Gordon Brown gave us all SEVENTY odd pence extra pension. After much agonising on how I should spend this bounty, I decided to buy another colander: so now I have two. Such affluence.

I can confirm though that you can make black holes in them: leaving it out over winter in the strawberry patch in the garden made a number of black holes in mine.

Does anyone else remember 'ZETA' circa 1959? (Zero Energy Thermonuclear Assembly) I think it was at Harwell. Somewhere, if I can find it I have 'Meccano Magazine' from that date with illustrations and explanations of the device.

Hello (britboy) Well done on achieving one of your goals ,to say i am overawed/envy/jealous is putting it mildly.
I am a fanatic of everything that involves things on our planet that have come from outer space it must have been a tremendous sight ,how long were you there? did you take any pics? the closest i have ever got is a dormant volcano on Hawaii not the big island the one on Waikiki it's called "diamond head volcano"it sit's at the far end of Waikiki there are tours up a long trail it was a bit knackering with the heat and the humidity but the view from the top superb! Have you any more plans for anything else britboy?

in 1969 I was glued to the tv screen when science fiction became science fact with the lunar landing, I did have a great science teacher in my younger days who encouraged all things science.

I got the chance to visit the Stennis Space Center in 2011, a wealth of great information ...LINK

I was fascinated with the Apollo Program which included the heroic lunar landing, I got to stand at the nozzle end of one of the Apollo Five rocket engines on display, a piece of history I never thought I would catch up with.

Stennis is the engine test center for NASA, I collected a NASA lapel badge while I was there, something small and probably insignificant to most but an important connection for me.

Btw I was at the meteor crater for a couple of hours, within its self the crater is fascinating but the bigger picture is the great expanse of flattened out land area from the impact , a few hundred square miles!

Zero Energy Thermonuclear Apparatus was the early experiment to produce electricity by Nuclear Fusion (as opposed to Nuclear Fission which is currently used to produce power and Nuclear Waste (so beloved by the greens)).

ZETA 1 construction started in 1954 and was in operation by 1957, ZETA 2 received funding in 1958 but experiments ended in 1961 when method used was superceded by more efficient methods, although later revue of results revealed an anomaly which inspired today's research. ZETA

Experiments to produce Fusion generated electricity continue but have yet to produce more energy than that consumed.
Fusion Today

Thanks macwil48. I am glad I am not the only person to remember this.

Almost history repeating itself with the 'Cold Fusion' claims of circa 1980.

I can remember the very day that my interest in science was sparked: one cold early morning in February in 1954, when I stood at the floor of the opencast excavation at Windy Arbour. I looked up at the layer of sod, then topsoil, then subsoil, then bands of clay and silt/sands, then strata of distinguishably different rock. Then standing on the white floor, the black shelf of coal that had been stripped of overlay, being cleanly scooped away by the green Ruston Bucyrus diesel shovels, and loaded into the waiting Bedford truck to be delivered to NCB at the former Blundell's site in Pemberton.

priscus, did that go to the Summersales wash by any chance ?

No, the Pemberton Colliery site. Long after mining ceased, it continued as screening, washer, and rail-head.

My dad was a haulage contractor and coal merchant at that time.

Strangely, we would take a truck load of opencast-mined coal into the place, dump it into the hopper, then drive around to the loading silos (if we were lucky, otherwise hand-bail the coal from rail trucks) and take another load of coal out again!

Only one customer got their coal directly from the opencast excavations, without it passing through NCB site, that was US base at Burtonwood.

I really struggle trying to understand Quantum Physics.

Some dozens of TV programmes have helped not one iota.

It is an area where I find the explanation attempts of those au fait with the topic tend to leave me more confused than enlightened.

Recently searched for a book to help, but the feedback on Amazon suggests that readers find the same as I have related above.

Anyone recommending any resources relating to this?

edit: ps I think the books by Richard Feynman, better than the rest, but I am still struggling!

"Im Laufe der Tür in den Tempel der Wissenschaft sind die Worte geschrieben, 'Du Muss Hast Glaube'! "

Who said that, yonks back?

PS: it wasn't ME!

Sounds like summut that damned patent clerk would say.

Tom visited CERN and the LHC when he was at college.

priscus

I struggle as well with Quantum Physics and Quantum Leap as they are exact opposites.

With Quantum Physics you cannot believe anything you see as the act of observing changes the acualité according to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle

A Quantum Leap is generally used for a BIG advance, yet a quantum is EXTREMELY small, what a dichotomy!

Something that I had never considered.

I guess the term 'Paradigm Shift' similarly is grossly abused!

Last night, watched an interesting programme on BBC4 about history of Jodrell Bank.

These items on 4 seem to get repeated a lot: worth watching if you are interested in revisiting the space race.

priscus

You might find this article interesting The Quantum Origin of Time

"It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards"

(Lewis Carroll)

Can anyone tell me is it going to be of any benefit to mankind or the planet please???/

If they crack room temperature superconductivity, or commercial Fusion Generation of Electricity, it could be.

Some think that more fully understanding electricity will yield an even greater future revolution in technology than that which it has delivered to date.

GB: if/when they get fusion to work there will be minimal Nuclear Waste produced and it will be almost self-sustaining. There will probably be side benefits from the science involved in producing the magnetic flux required to contain the plasma.