Half Term Escape 4 - cut off from civilisation

Today, the road works begin.  I walked out of the drive to see what was happening.  According to yesterday's signs, the road is closed.  That means no way out of the house in either direction.  We would be marooned. They are repairing the road edge, goodness knows why, it is nowhere near as bad as a lot of the local roads we have driven on.   There was a trench down the side of the road 30-40cm wide, and about the same depth.  There were loads of lorries and road carving equipment, and may be a dozen men standing around.  They promised to let us out and back in again.

With our new-found freedom, we visited the Observatory Science Centre at Herstmonceaux Castle.  I had never heard of it, but it is the most amazing place, and ideally suited to primary age children.  The video shows Thomas turning a giant ball of rock, this is made possible by the carefully constructed stand that it is in and the power of water under pressure.  The whole place is covered with experiments and demonstrations, almost all are interactive.  There were also two presentations, one on the telescopes and another on astronauts.

Thomas showed off his knowledge to the astronomer presenter, who was hugely impressed with his knowledge.

If you decide to visit, and you should, even if you don't have a primary school aged child to bring, the on;y thing to be aware of is the general lack of facilities.  The toilets are small and hodden away, the café is tiny and the burger bar just a caravan.  The choices are therefore limited, and the service is slow.

Despite these drawbacks, I had a wonderful time, and so did everyone else.

Education Sunday - Teachers who have influenced us

We were asked to think about teachers who had influenced us, so here are the three that came to mind.

Mr Neale. A physics teacher at my senior school, whose lessons allowed us to experiment and who engaged his class with the practical things of physics as well as the theoretical things. He was responsible for me subscribing to 'New Scientist' for a number of years.

Mr Harris, who was never my teacher at all, but taught me more than many of the others put together. After and during exams we had lots of free time, which had to be spent in school. Mr Harris allowed me (even encouraged me) to help out in his class. He ran a game, which taught the children history, if I remember correctly. The game required quite a bit of practical help, and I was one of the helpers. I learned about teaching, and encouraging children to be engaged with the game and learn through it. As a sixteen year old it was a new world to me, and one I explored and enjoyed being involved in. It set me up for running youth groups in my 20s and 30s.

Ed Wilson, my sixth from maths teacher, the last in a long line of brilliant maths teachers, that made maths my subject. His worked with the three of us on the extended course, it made him almost a friend, and in the sixth form that is just what you need to learn. I passed the exam. At the end of the two years he took us to the pub over the road for a 'leaving drink'.

Quick review of "The Cell"

The review is here.

Time

Our perception of time slows as we get older - no surprise there. In his experiment Michio Kaku shows that young people asked to estimate a minute are generally short of the target (less than 60 seconds) whereas older people generally exceed the target (greater than 60 seconds). So as we get older our internal clock move from running fast to running slow. Other changes occur as well - we age. These changes give us a sense of how long we have left before our clock stops altogether. When you're young, fifty or sixty years remaining is two to three times the life you've experienced so far. When you older 10 or 20 years remaining is less that half what you've experienced so far. We are all aware of our mortality, its in everything we do. We're also unique in this respect amongst all creation. There's lots of technical stuff about 'free radicals' (which reminds me of the line in James Bond "eliminate all free radicals") and mitochondria, very old parrots (not dead yet), and the sea urchin. The sea urchin apparently lives a VERY long time, and doesn't appear to age. So then we come to the big question. The nematode worm has been bread to live to twice its natural age. Would you choose for you children to live to 140+? Another professor reckons that in 20-30 years the elixir of youth will be found. Drink this and your body will become 30 years younger. You're not immortal an accident will get you eventually, perhaps on average you'll last 10,000 years.
This was the topic I wanted to cover for my Ethics essay, but couldn't find enough information. It raises so many questions. How will society change? What would your motivations be if there really was ALWAYS TOMORROW? How will we deal with the population issues? Would you keep on bringing up children, say one every 1000 years? How long does 1,000,000 years look when you're 100,000 years old? How would we ration this treatment - the usual way I expect, so a few rich people live 'forever' and the majority of the worlds population still die in their 40's?

but the big question is would you?

The program suggested that older people would and younger wouldn't - well at least not until they're older.

This may be the most frightening Sci-fi scenario ever.

would you?