How to test the braking distance of airliners...
- 8 Mar 07, 02:44 PM
If I didn't know before that physics is a capricious mistress, as likely to dash me to earth as to lift me out of my prosaic daily round, then I certainly found out the day I boarded a flight to Colombia. I was on my way to undertake the latest stage of my scientific education.
My grandfather built and ran railways through the beautiful but implacable South American countryside, where he and other engineers coaxed steam locomotives all the way from the Atlantic coast through bug-loud jungle into the faint-making high sierras of Bogota, the Colombian capital. The country where my grandfather spent so many years of his life now enjoys a well-deserved reputation for kidnapping and violence.
But as I took my seat aboad the jet, I little suspected that physics had hazards of her own to mete out, that my fellow passengers and I were about to find ourselves at the centre of a summary experiment concerning the braking distance of a fully-laden airliner...
I was travelling with cameraman Frank Consadine, a garlanded lensman who is revered throughout the industry as much for his sang froid in a tight spot as for his craftsmanship through a view-finder. Frank and I had seats near the doors. I can't recall the precise moment during the flight - was it when Frank was reading aloud to me from a much-thumbed Auden? Could it have been when his castle took my bishop to trap me into a textbook zugzwang? - but there came a moment when I half-heard an announcement from the flight deck, and turned to my companion to ask, "Frank, did the captain just say something about a computer?"
We were travelling with a foreign carrier. The steward's grasp of English did not extend much beyond the phrase "Beef or salmon?" Then again, my own command of his native tongue would not allow me to ask him "What was that about a computer?" Which was very much what I felt like doing when he crouched beside me and began to sketch what looked like a plane on paper napkin. "How do you call this?" he said, pointing his pen at a substantial piece of the superstructure which he had just limned on the serviette.
"You don't mean the wing?"
"The wing, yes!" said the steward brightly. He now drew a little box under the wing, and looked up expectantly.
"Aileron?" offered Frank, who had been taking an interest.
"Flap?" I said.
"Yes! Flap!" cried the steward. We might have been helping him to solve a ticklish crossword puzzle. Top-level newsmen that we are, Frank and I presently intuited that the plane's computer was no longer communicating with the flaps. The thought-provoking physics of all this was that the pilot no longer had command over a vital tool used in the slowing-down of his aircraft. The flight was being diverted away from Colombia, and making instead for the attractive Caribbean resort of Guadeloupe. Was this something to do with the aforementioned altitude of Bogota, Frank and I asked each other?
Well, no, funnily enough, it was rather that Guadeloupe airport had a longer runway than Bogota airport. Though having said that, it might not be quite long enough for our present purposes. This emerged when another member of the flight crew came to see us and wondered whether Frank and I were willing to make ourselves useful. We looked at each other.
The thing was, the stewardess went on, the plane might run off the end of the tarmac and crash in the rough grass behind.
"Right," we said.
"You're sitting near the doors. If we do crash, people will panic and rush to get out. Would you mind standing up and holding them back?"
"Is this a wind-up?" said Frank. But we both suspected that it wasn't.
What else could we do but agree to help. It was a long hour, the one we spent waiting for the plane to land. I can't pretend that the physics of our predicament was uppermost in my thoughts. But we did subject it to minute anlaysis, Frank and I, after the captain made an immaculate landing, and night fell on the progressively less-well stocked bar of Guadeloupe airport.
Steve Smith gets his A Level Physics result and talks to a giraffe (we don't know why) - CLICK HERE TO WATCH
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Hair raising. But not that uncommon in the region.
I was once on a Venezuelan plane from Caracas to Havana, planning to land there late in the evening. Havana airspace is very quiet at that time, and it should have been a case of a direct approach and landing. After a while, we were going round in circles. Then the crew came back to the cabin to peer at a wing area. No announcements in Spanish or any other language. Eventually, a landing on the other side's wheels, with a very gentle touch down on the side in question. Cabin crew looking nervous, holding emergency torches. Turns out, crew did not know whether the wheels were down and locked in position. No passenger announcements at any point. But another Latin American bar was attacked. And the airline went bust a few months later.
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Science is a facinating subject to many people. The reduction in experiments shown and/or carried out is a very bad way of encouraging students to study the subject.
The facination in science BEGINS when its effects are SEEN. Then come the questions - WHY does the light bulb glow and get hot? The NEXT move should be the teaching and reading to EXPLAIN the answers.
The Bunson Burner, rather than Mr Jones' words, is what I remember from the science lab - what fun, and I learned something too.
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Completely agree with today鈥檚 topic about the importance of experimental science and its role in educating a new generation of thinkers. This is what science does best after all, get people to think about problems and hopefully encourage them to try to solve them.
Failure and mistakes are common in experimental science and this is probably its most useful contribution to its practitioners. It teaches us about real life, to deal with failure, to persevere in the face of difficulty and to learn from your experiences, to have the confidence to try new things, to innovate.
I'm sure you will be fascinated by some of the videos you see on our website...
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Mr Smith managed to get through the mechanics module of his A/AS physics course. En route, he got some glim glam travel, and saw physics in action, and the effect of pressure changes with altituded on challenges to his family heritage.
In going to 2 marks below a pass, based on what I've seen him doing, Mr Smith has put up a very very creditable performance indeed.
As JFK alluded to using words akin to "because it's hard", some of us tried to do physics because it was mystifying, and needed some degree of hard thinking. Nature's puzzles.
In "de boffinising" the subject, Mr Smith has done an excellent, albeit often tongue in cheek, job.
And, in an era of general dumbing things down, the exam bit shows the discipline behind the pretty pictures , snazzy experiments, and general "mirth". He took the mock seriously, so it seems, and surely cannot be dissappointed with his result.
Congratulations, Mr Smith, and very well done indeed.
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"The Bunson Burner", and entry from another contributor, alerted me to the, maybe trivial, observation that one thing that helps to mystify science is the terminology/language it often uses.
I believe the Herr BunsEn invented the "lab flame thrower", now perhaps demanding of forests of paperwork before the gas can be lit.
In "The Arts", although Ms Wark often seems to mention things like "the dynamic(s?)" and "polemic", generally speaking the language used is English (even if you DO have to swallow several dictionaries).
In Science of course, it's the language of words/symbols/"mathocism" which often leaves those of us who've staggered through them with a need for an oxygen transfusion.
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So having failed A level to keep the idiom going it is time for a gap year. To go treking in the hindu kush, to take the magic bus to marrakesh, to sleep on a settee in singapore.
Everyone looks cool in a kaftan.
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actually all science should start with experimentation to show the power of science. books come later. to go to books first is stupid education. show people the power and they will get hooked. How about that 18 year old in the usa making nuclear fusion in his garage from spare parts?
It is the power of mathematics that made Soros a billion. Without science we would still be sitting around the log fire in the roundhouse surrounded by goats. Columbus fooled the american natives because he predicted an eclipse. The scientists have been fooling us every since.
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I quite agree; practical demonstrations and experiments are required for a full enjoyment, interest and understanding of not only physics but all the sciences. I was lucky enough to have physics teachers who took every opportunity to (at the very least) demonstrate science in a practical manner.
It's like playing a musical instrument: you'll only improve if you practice. Likewise, you'll only understand electric circuits, for example, if you build one on your own.
From experience (I finished college last year) the way I see it is that it's not necessarily a lack of interest in physics that keeps students from furthering their studies of it, but a lack of knowledge on the careers that a degree or better in physics can present. There were, by the end of the second year about 12 or 13 students in total doing Physics in the whole of year 13 (this was a sixth form, much smaller than the college Stephen鈥檚 attending; probably between 400 and 500 students across the two years). I don鈥檛 believe any of us opted for a career in physics.
As Stephen鈥檚 report from the Siemens factory, where they constructed magnets for use in hospital scanners, showed, physics is the founder and 鈥減rogressor鈥, if you will, of technology. However, people don鈥檛 always look at the improving or developing of technology to be related to physics. Why, I don鈥檛 know, but I feel that if this country needs to encourage more people into a career in physics, people need to know about what a career in physics could be, and what it could offer them, and the nation, or even world, as a whole (granted, it鈥檚 not possible to say 鈥測ou could discover [this]鈥 if it鈥檚 not been discovered yet, but I hope you understand my point).
On the other hand, those GCSE statistics in the second(?) film were less than optimistic with regards to maths and science. I just hope that the opposite end of the spectrum holds people who look at physics as a career rather than a subject.
I must admit, I am a 鈥減hysics dropout鈥 if you will. I chose a (perhaps simpler) media-based subject (sound engineering) over physics, which was actually my initial choice of university subject after my GCSEs. However, this is more likely due to a lack in confidence in what I can achieve if I were to do degree level physics, rather than a lack of interest. I managed a grade D for A-level physics (and also the same for chemistry), which I was pleased with, I hasten to add.
For me, physics is still my most favourite science and I consider it one of my top subjects at school.
PS 鈥 Remember: without physics, there would be no TV, no radio, no rapid communications, no computers and no internet for me to post this one! In short, there would be nothing without physics. And I reckon there鈥檚 still something missing for a future physicist to discover. (I'm still waiting for robots that do everything)
PPS - Well done Stephen! Don't worry, most of my class, including me, had to resit Forces & Motion.
...Wow I talk a lot!
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I would like to see science taught as a compulsory subject in schools today.A classical education should always include science.By science I mean strictly maths or physics,not biology in which any fool can get a good grade.In the continental system the most intelligent students are always counselled to go into science,however diverse their talents.
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its my birthday on March 27th...YAY...
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