The first session of the afternoon is on revealing Energy and has talks from Ross Lovegrove, Nick Veasey, Steve Cowley, Eric Giler and Bertrand Piccard
The first session is a musical event based around the Theremin played by the niece of the inventor - Lydia Kavina - who is based in Oxford and is accompanied by the radio science orchestra. She played three pieces which relate to the past, present and future. The second song was one written by Thomas Dolby to celebrate the Sputnik - the first satellite in space 52 years ago. The third piece was the theme from Doctor Who which I guess was the first experience most people had of the Theremin although they probably didn't realise how the music was being played. A quick search on Google reveals that there are many kits available to make your won machine and even a Wii application to use the games platform as a Theremin!
Ross Lovegrove is an industrial designer known as Captain Organic - he embraces nature as the inspiration for his free design - each object he creates - be it a bottle, chair, staircase or car - is reduced to its essential elements - his pieces offer minimal forms of maximum beauty. Ross comes from Wales and where he was brought up the beach was covered with amazing designs in the forms of fossils. He walks, he dreams and he thinks. He is rarely in the now.
He demonstrated Lovegrove Genesis meaning an origin or renewal of something. He works through association and she showed an images which he has either designed or things that has inspired him and he uses associations of these objects in association to create new things. He wants to share with us some principles:
- Organic essentialism - He takes the objects which are associated with this and associates them to think about things in new ways. He designs on computer and tests things out on everyday objects like tables and chairs. In nature most colour comes from surface texture rather than pigment.
- Lightness - Again he forms a neural pulse where he takes objects which are related - he
developed the worlds lightest suitcase at 1.3kg. The case has no lining as it would add 400 gms to the weight the case has a feeling of pressurisation - it looks as if it has been inflated.
- Netification - the idea that you can reduce the mass of objects by reducing the supporting structures. An example he used is lighting in Japan which is a cross fluorescent light
- Natural Energy
Unfortunately Ross went over his time and had to be pulled off the stage - not literally.
Nick Veasey "Logging countless hours behind an X-ray machine, Nick Veasey illuminates the labyrinthine secrets hidden beneath the exteriors of everyday objects" Revealing the energy of the X-Ray.
He showed a number of x-ray images including an X-Ray of a bus including all the
people on it - it was just one person replicated in the image. Using large scale X-Rays using cargo scanners. He is inspired by nature. He has a new purpose built X-Ray shed - where he uses a lot more radiation than you would normally used in hospitals. He still uses film as the digital world hasn't caught up yet with the large format X-Rays.
Colouring adds another level of interest to the images. the most difficult things to X-Ray are the lightest things. A commercial application of Nicks work is the advertisement for Lucozade below.
Steve Cowley "Steven Cowley directs the UK's leading fusion research center. Soon he'll helm new experiments that may make cheap fusion energy real on a commercial scale"
He is talking today about Nuclear Physics - when are we going to get Fusion? When it was explained to him that we are eating up our resources he got very worried - energy today is dominated by resource. Countries that have things buried beneath them have things that people want - mainly energy sources. We are using energy faster and faster today - we need to make energy in the future is from knowledge - not resources.
The UK Government are going to out in 16 Nuclear power stations in the coming years - Nuclear Fission. What we really need is a small source, no environmental impact and no harmful waste. The most stable nucleus is Iron - Deuterium and Tritium come together and they briefly make lithium6 and that releases Helium and a Neutron - what comes out of this is energy. Tritium doesn't exist in nature so you have to make it. How much fuel have we got left - oil has somewhere between 10 - 60 years, Gas 10 - 600 years, however Lithium we have 1000 - 30 Million years basically held in sea water..
How do you hold something at 150 million degrees - by holding it in a magnetic field. There is only one machine in the world which can make fusion and that is JET which created 16 megawatts of power in the 1960s. They is a new project to build a new facility which will be switched on in 2013 to prove whether Fusion is a realistic source for power in the future.
Eric Giler runs a company that has developed a method for transmitting power wirelessly. We humans love electricity - and we love batteries which we dispose of 40 billion batteries every year. Wires suck - batteries suck when we dispose of them they disintegrate and then they go for landfill and pollute the land. MIT Physicists created WiTricity in - the first experiment lit a 60w bulb over a 200m range. This used resonant energy transfer using an oscillating magnetic field around a resonant coil. This is a non-radiative power transfer - uses magnetic near field which are about the same as the earthy magnetic field.
They have developed a wide range of applications - electric cars that park on a mat that charges the car, robot vacuum cleaners, medical devices and heated dog bowls.
Jason Sol is a TEDster that does card magic - he envisaged card flourishing - the fanciful manipulation of playing cards. The art flourished via social media - a youtube video teaching people how to do it has had over 300,000 views.
Betrand Piccard circumnavigated the Earth in a hot-air balloon. Now he wants to circle it in an airplane powered only by solar energy.
The last speaker of this session is Betrand Piccard circumnavigated the Earth in a hot-air balloon. Now he wants to circle it in an airplane powered only by solar energy.
He starts with what can he tell us other than hot air and wind! Like in life balloons are pushed by the winds - if we want to change our direction in life or in balloons we have to change altitude. In balloons when you change altitude we drop ballast - we should see this as a metaphor for changing our lies - our ballast is dogmas paradigms our baggage. We need to explore all the ways we can go, all the ways we can think before we choose the direction we want to go in.
He has believed these things for a long time but had to go round the world in a balloon to get invited to talk about it! If you get at the wrong altitude you may go faster but end up in the wrong direction - "Do you want to go very fast in the wrong direction or slow but in the right direction!"
His next project is a solar powered plane that he plans to circumnavigate the world in the next few years. the plane is a symbol - it will never carry passengers but this is a start, an example - a symbol of what we can achieve, when we believe the impossible can be done.
They are getting invited to speak around the world by leaders and governments to talk about the solar project - this alone is creating a belief that the impossible is possible.
Which is the ballast you wish to throw overboard - which is the altitude you want to be at and what do you have to do to get there?
