Robert Race

Our local arts centre, New Brewery Arts, is hosting a small exhibitions of moving toys and automata by the artist, Robert Race. I've just been.

Robert Race used to teach science; now he's a full-time artist, working almost entirely with found objects and detritus, which includes a lot of driftwood, to create wonderful, moving pieces. Some of the works are wall-sized and explicitly mechanical, others are much smaller with subtler mechanisms. And most charming; I almost bought a small bird chasing a bee, made from driftwood and clockwork (the reason I didn't is I've never bought directly from an exhibition before, one in progress, and, as visitors were encouraged to play with the objects, I don't know what happens if a bought object gets broken).

However, the piece I liked best in the exhibition I couldn't afford. Titled, Nothing much happening in black & white, it actually featured a pair of counter-rotating, stylised propeller aircraft flying around a slender and upright log, driftwood probably, the mechanism powered by gravity using a shorter, detachable log as a weight. The whole thing was about eight foot tall and would've looked great had I owned a room of sufficient height to do it justice.

There is a website but it doesn't even begin to do the work justice. You'll just have to seek them out for yourself.

the naming of things

I see the Guardian is holding a competition to give names to endangered bugs and plants so rare they're only known by scientists who speak of them in Latin. It would be a nice idea but I haven't caught up with the names of all the non-endangered critters yet! Time's running out for us all...

on growth

Yesterday I met up with some old friends I don't get to see that often. We get talking and I'm sometimes shocked at how much our views have diverged during the absence. I don't like arguing when I haven't seen them in a long while, and I don't argue well after a few drinks - I'm not that lucid sober come to mention it - and I forget my facts.

This time everyone, apart from me, was in agreement that there was ''plenty of petrol'', and, to put it into some context, we'll all still be driving [petrol or diesel] cars in our 80s. I could have said something more but didn't. If it wasn't about fuel, it'd be about pensions and financial growth, increased affluence etc. Business as usual stuff. Growth ad infinitum.

Back home, I reassure myself of a few facts - after all, they could be right, couldn't they? But, of course, they're wrong. In my search I found this lecture on the mathematics of growth by Dr. Albert Bartlett. While I'd come across the story of the King's chessboard before, I've not seen it applied to so many real world situations, like population and peak oil. It's as simple as it is awesome, and simply awful that so many intelligent people don't appear to get it.



Due to the limits of Youtube clips, the lecture is divided into 8 parts. Be sure to view them all.

cubism kills the turbine

The last post on wind energy - for now.

I was still stuck with the thought that something is better than nothing and if you could use a turbine to power a few light bulbs or a laptop then at least that's something. And, I thought, it's not the technology that's crooked, it's the economics - they cost too damn much! Around £10,000 even after an improvement grant. Then the cost analyser in me wondered where this money was going - surely, a competent DIY person could make one from parts? Maybe there are blueprints!

Googling around a bit I found there are. However, then I stumbled upon this. And this. And, eventually, this.

Of course, the engineer in me knew there'd be an equation for it, even if it's merely rule-of-thumb. Apparently, it is,

Power in watts = (collection area in square feet) x (wind speed)3 x (0.0054)

or simply, Power is proportional to wind speed cubed. As it explains, turbines are sold on their ability to generate a nominal amount in windy conditions. But on less windy days - in other words, average conditions - the power drops disproportionally. Hence, half the rated speed results in just one-eighth of the rated power.

the pleasure of Feynman

Posting the James Lovelock interview earlier reminded me of a favourite video; Richard Feynman on The Pleasure of Finding Things Out. Feynman was a physicist who had worked on developing the atomic bomb, and on quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics. In 1965 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. He was a captivating lecturer and I can see how in this programme. As you can see in this clip, he also liked to draw portraits.

It's the first part of a five-part video of an original broadcast in 1981 by BBC Horizon (about 50 minutes altogether). Follow the link to YouTube, it's worth watching the whole programme.