Category: Science Group

At our July meeting members of the group arrived with their homework which was to create an image using an early photographic technique called Cyanotype.

The image is formed on light sensitive thin card and the results varied due to differing qualities of the cards purchased for the activity.

More of the better quality was made available at the meeting for members to try again and some of the results are shown below.

Creating more images was only part of a practical session to discover things about magnets, mirrors, lenses, gyroscopes and diffraction spectrum by looking through diffraction spectacles.

We finished with an end of term quiz won by the ‘Berrill Catering’ team.

There is no meeting in August our next meeting is on Friday 20^th September. 

At our June meeting Terry Hill summarised the importance of the work of the late Sir Peter Higgs of Higgs Boson fame.

He made a fantastic job of explaining the very challenging concept of how the Higgs boson was proposed in 1964 by Peter Higgs, François Englert, and four other theorists to explain why certain particles have mass.

Scientists confirmed its existence in 2012 through experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland. This discovery led to the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics being awarded to Higgs and Englert.

After Terry’s talk we had an attempt to produce a cyanotype image using light sensitive paper. Members were given their own paper to try this at home; the resulting images will be displayed at a later date.

Last year a topic we covered was about sustainability in fashion. Much of today’s ‘fast fashion’ ends in landfill rather than being recycled. Science member Christine Vincent has a particular interest in this field and modelled a very creative colourful dress she has made from old ties.

Next Meeting

Friday 19^th July 10.00am – 11.45am, JGC- please bring your cyanotype results.

16^th August – No meeting as we are away.

We will reconvene on Friday 20^th September.

We next meet at 10.00am on Friday June 21^st in the main hall at JGC.

Terry Hill is presenting a talk about the late Peter Higgs who famously predicted the existence of what became known as the Higgs-Boson particle. Learn more from Terry on the 21^st.

We will then have a demonstration of cyanotype imaging and you will receive a kit to make your own. Please bring your result along to our July 19th meeting.

In the style of Blue Peter-‘One I made earlier’

After the break there is a presentation about the animals that live and coexist in the different layers of Rain Forests.

On Friday 19^th April members of the science group together with a few colleagues from National Trust and History made an all day visit to Oxford.

Oxford is an interesting city with impressive buildings, the Oxford Colleges and several museums.

The main aim was to make group visits to the Natural History and Pitt Rivers museums which were pre booked for the afternoon.

On arrival outside the Ashmolean Museum, following a photo opportunity the group dispersed to explore. Many found their way to the History of Science Museum, the Ashmolean, and the Radcliffe Camera, the Open Bus Tour, cafes and a Wetherspoons named The Four Candles.

It is an eye-catching building next door but one to Oxford University’s history faculty. It was originally the city’s High School for Boys, which opened in 1881. The comic actor Ronnie Barker was a former pupil and later one of the Two Ronnies. Probably their best-known sketch was ‘Four Candles’. Barker walks into a hardware store and asks for and gets ‘four candles’. However, he really wanted fork handles – ‘andles for forks’. Thanks to everyone for navigating the city and meeting up on time for the booked visit.

At our March meeting, on Friday 15^th, Terry Hill told the tale of seven not so famous scientists who unfortunately met untimely deaths caused by their inventions or discoveries.

One of the seven was Sabin Arnold von Sochocky (1883 to 1928).  He used the discovery of radium by Pierre and Marie Curie to invent radium luminescent paint in 1908.

 Radium paint was widely used for 40 years on the faces of watches, compasses, and aircraft instruments, so they could be read in the dark. Radium is a radiological hazard, emitting gamma rays that can penetrate a glass watch dial and into human tissue. 

He died at the age of 44 from radiation poisoning.

This was followed by an introduction to Rainforests and their importance to our ecosystem.

Friday April 19^th is our visit to Oxford for the Science Museums.   No meeting at John Godber Centre.

David Rose