Camp Energy

My Performance
To be entirely honest, I couldn’t quite give 100% to Camp Energy (cue some pun about energy efficiency). The major factor in this was the fact that I had just finished my third year exams, and simply didn’t have enough of a break between the two activities. As discussed with Caitlin at the Pie and Mash place, this probably didn’t make me an ideal candidate for the project - but it seemed to be the case that not too many other students were forthcoming, for what I can only imagine were similar reasons! Still, you can’t help the timing of the festival.

The Team
This seems to be a recurring theme on the blog (and even some of the subsequent publicity!). As most people who know me will testify, I am quite a competitive person. It’s why I went to Cambridge, why I entered the Young Physicists’ Conference 2005 lecture competition (and won it), etc.. It’s just the sort of person I am. I think it’s fair to say that the others on the challenge were not very competitive, which is why I found it difficult to get motivated at times. Without others on a similar wavelength to respond to, with the aim of cheekily “outdoing” them (in good spirits, of course), it was bit of a struggle. Probably my problem, but there you go. There’s someone I met from YPC - Rosie Walton, a fellow lecture competition participent - who would have been ideal to have along for the ride in this respect. I think her exams were even later than mine though. Never mind…

As for the sleeping in, I’m really not a morning person. But it’s interesting that no-one felt like they could talk to me about it at the time, and that it would somehow be better to mention it on the blog afterwards. Maybe I just don’t respond well to subtle hints

The Challenges
In terms of how my solar cookers actually performed, I would say they weren’t too bad - they actually cooked things, and demonstrated the basic physical principles. Ideally, 1) I would have done more research (impossible due to exam constraints), 2) I would have looked at and built some of the parabolic types, 3) I would have had exactly the right equipment (this would have required more time to get the shopping list to Caitlin earlier for more of the tricky stuff, again difficult because of exams) and 4) I would have put a lot more emphasis on describing the physics (reflectivity, heat transfer, absorption spectrums, heat capacities, shapes of ideal reflectors, etc.). Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

The Best Bit - Explaining Physics
Even the small amount of physics that we did consider in the challenges is what I would call the “boring” stuff - what I’d leave to the engineers (who would probably make a much better job of doing things with it!). As a particle physicist in the making (hopefully), I got a lot more out of talking about physics in general, why I’m studying physics, what I’ll be doing at CERN, why we should study fundamental physics, and what physics actually is.

The best bit of the whole festival was where this kid was filling out a Pfizer-sponsored worksheet, where he had to explain the link between Einstein and a radioactive warning sign. I overheard this wannabe science communicator-helper type (probably a “biologist”) trying to explain and I couldn’t resist stepping in. I asked the boy with the worksheet if he knew Einstein’s famous equation, which he did. I then asked him what each of the letters meant. He got energy and mass - but thought “c” was circumference (bless!). So, I told him it was the speed of light, but that we could ignore it (i.e. we worked in natural units). So then I asked him what that meant - i.e. the importance of the equals sign - and we worked through the equivalence of mass and energy, demonstrating the idea with the fission of the uranium nucleus and how the extra energy released lead to bombs and nuclear power. That moment - when in his head, it stopped being an equation and started to actually mean something to him - was brilliant. By applying a bit of thought, and asking him the right questions, he’d got the hang of one of the greatest discoveries of the twentieth century. That’s what physics is about for me. It’s just a shame that this aspect seems to have passed by the GCSE / A level syllabus writers. But would I go into teaching to try and do something about it? Yes, probably. Once I’ve done a bit of research, anyway…

On the success of Camp Energy
Within the parameters of the task as it was, and given that it was the first time the event had been run, I would say that it went well. This was mainly due to Caitlin’s ideas, hard work and organisation - in particular, the blogging aspect was very effective (and would have been more so had we had wireless internet access!), and it was great to have Rinky Dink along.

As for changing what I do to help reduce my carbon footprint, this is a tricky one. I was pretty good about turning off lights/monitors/televisions before the project - even doing so for other people at times. I don’t have a car (you don’t need one in Cambridge and I’m normally abroad for the vacations), and the only flights I make are necessary ones. I do, however, leave my computer on if I’m away for a short time - as I generally can’t be bothered to go through the shut down/boot up procedure every ten minutes (though I do use the power save/hibernate options). But, as has been pointed out by others, the research I want to take part in uses huge amounts of energy. However, in short, I think if something needs to be done I don’t think you shouldn’t do it if it not “carbon friendly”. The problem, of course, arises in your definition of “need” (e.g. I can imagine a lot of people saying “I need to drive to the shops as I don’t have time to walk”)… but that’s just the nature of human beings, I suppose.

Anyway, it’s been fun - to the other “campers”, good luck with respective PhDs/travelling/job hunting/getting physics into society. I’m sure we’ll bump into each other at some point. To everyone else - try thinking about things every now and then. You’d be surprised at how rewarding it can be.

Tom

The amount of carbon dioxide we saved over the course of the festival was (approximately): 73kg

At standard temperature and pressure, this is about 1/50 of an Olympic swimming pool of CO_{2}.

Of course, the strength of any good “physics” relies on the assumptions it uses. Here are my assumptions:

1) If we weren’t camping outside the town hall, we would have been living in a house/flat in London, with gas heating and no energy efficient technology, and mainly using public transport to go about our daily business. This information was fed into the carbon calculator BP provide (http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/carboncalc/ - more useful than the one at www.carbonfootprint.com in this situation as you didn’t need electricity/gas bills, which we we didn’t have) to give a total for the year, which was then used to give the volume generated over five days (assuming these were five “average” days - a questionable assumption given the weather for the festival). As we had no need for transport or heating, and given that any cooking we did or lighting/electricity that we needed was generated using carbon neutral means, the figure for the carbon dioxide that the calculator produced was all saved. This turned out to be 68kg of CO_{2}.

2) Any carbon dioxide produced by the facilities that we used in the Town Hall had to be divided by the total number of end users. Given that thousands of people attended the festival, staying there for several hours at a time, and that we only popped in every now and then, this amount would have been negligible. It was thus ignored in the calculation (though recommendations for refinements are most welcome - you know where the comment button is…).

3) Food: By buying local produce, the idea was to reduce the carbon dioxide emitted by the transport of food. To make things simpler, let’s assume: a) all of our food and drink came from one location in a handy basket-type thing, weighing about 10kg (to 1sf), and fed the four of us for one day. b) On average, non carbon-friendly food will have come on a medium-haul flight (e.g. Africa, India). A typical cargo plane (say a Boeing 727) can carry 13000kg in cargo (again, corrections welcome!) and releases about 1300kg of CO_{2} on a medium haul flight (this is from www.carbonfootprint.com). So carrying our 10kg box of food will release about 1kg of CO_{2} - and over 5 days, that would have added up to 5kg in all.

However, we got our food from local sources. So with the same assumptions, this time saying that the food was carried 50 miles by an MPV diesel vehicle, we get a figure of about 170g of CO_{2} released for the same period of time - i.e. neglible. So we saved about 5kg.

4) Had we been able to completely dictate the conditions, we would have found somewhere a) with a fresh water stream and b) where we could have used one of those “composting toilet” things. As such, the carbon emissions from the utilities we did actually use have not been factored in to the calculation.

This is by no means a definitive figure, and the assumptions are by no means correct - but it’s probably not too bad an order of magnitude calculation to be going on with. As I have said many times above, go wild with the comments…

With the benefit of hindsight, I guess it’s a good idea to jot some final thoughts down. In no particular order:
1. We were very lucky with the weather. I’m not sure how things would have gone in rainy conditions.

2. I was a bit lame with the biodiesel. I made it, and then I didn’t really do anything with it. That said, I spoke to plenty of people who did use it, including one guy who uses it on his Passat.

3. Tom managed to get CERN mentioned in our panel discussion with Quentin Cooper. That got me thinking: is experimental particle physics the biggest waste of resources ever? Doubtless Tom would disagree, but I wonder….

4. ALL of this stuff we have been doing, give or take solar panels, involves basic physics and technology that our ancestors knew well. Whilst we have achieved incredible technological knowledge, we have perhaps lost touch with some wise old ways that have in the past been passed on from one generation to the next. We waste so much. I can’t help feeling that it is rampant consumerism that is fundamentally at odds with keeping our planet in ecological equilibrium.

On that note, I’m off to Sainsbury’s.

Well, it’s been a while but I’ll let you know what happened on Sunday, the last day of camp:( We got up and didn’t have to set up the GEM as it left the previous night so we lunged straight into breakfast. Astonishingly Tom managed to get himself up around 8.30/9… which was convenient as there was no immediate work to be done. Just in case you haven’t read the rest of the blog, I’ve been weakly trying to hint at the fact that Tom managed to either be “asleep” or in the shower every other morning when we had the dull task of unloading the GEM and setting up for the day. We spent the morning working hard showing off our tasks to the visitors. We had mostly families and the time seemed to fly by and without the GEM it seemed more fun. We were getting less questions about where to buy wind turbines and more on what we had actually done ourselves. My favorite part of the week was hearing families saying - we can do that, lets try making solar cookers - or - we could heat our paddling pool using a modified version of the hot tub.

There seemed to be loads more people taking on the physics ideas and thinking about using them themselves. Whether it was for fun or to heat water for the washing up. It was cool. Or rather it was hot. Really hot! Got burnt… and now I have silly tanlines/burnlines.

We had to finish early though and do the panel show with Quentin Cooper in the afternoon. That was fine. I think it was probably pretty dull to watch. I’m not sure who much the people paid to come and see us but I feel a bit bad because some of the questions were answered poorly. Not poorly really, more that questions were not answered very consisely or at all. I know I talked rubbish but then I always do and it’s something I’m coming to terms with. I like to think I’m a bit like Bridget Jones - a movie set in London starring Renee Zellweger and Mr Darcy.

Anyhow the day pretty much ended there. We packed up and shipped home. I got the train back to London and collapsed on my bed and fell asleep. Before I did, I made sure I had a hot shower and a glass of nesquick. And that was me and camp energy finished with. I had camp energy’s t-shirts, pencils and bunting, and camp energy had given me sunburn, a cold and absolutely no energy. Camp energy had sapped my energy! Ha ha… oh dear…

Well I have to be off now. Before I go, this is how camp energy has affected me and what I shall do to reduce my carbon emissions:

- I shall try to drink less hot drinks during the day - max of 2 per day (normally I have 4-6) .
- I shall make an attempt to take shorter showers to use less electric energy in heating - 10 mins max (normally I take 15 mins).

- I am moving next month and so I shall try and get my electric from a green energy supplier.

- I shall only eat one hot meal per day! I need to be a little less greedy for the sake of paying my overdraft. Don’t worry, I’ll have a sarnie at lunch still.

- I shall not be afraid of slightly bullying my flatmates about being greener as I think, at heart, they want to be environmentally (a bit more) friendly.

That’s about it for now. I’d like to say thankyou to Caitin and the IoP for letting me be a camper, to Alex and the organisers of the festival for being so accomodating and finally to the visitors (who were nice!), particularly Elliot and family who visited us even though we had little to show.

Byeeeee x

…it’s over. At least the roughing it part is. So how do I feel now it’s over? I feel like I do use quite a lot of energy, and now I know it’s possible, I feel like I should minimise it. Not to the extreme, but to avoid wasting energy unnecessarily. So I won’t leave the laptop on when I’m not using it, or the lights, or have the immersion heater on if I’m not going to need hot water.

I drove into uni yesterday - the price the environment pays for me living on my narrowboat but going to Reading Uni - and was painfully aware of the petrol gauge going down. One thing that I try to do most of the time is to chill out when I’m driving. I’ll stay under 70mph and not worry if I’m stuck behind a lorry. That’s my top tip if you have to drive: just leave in good time and chill out. That way you don’t waste fuel by overtaking (the acceleration uses up a lot of fuel) and then having to slow down suddenly when the cars in front are all going slower (deceleration also uses fuel). And you are less stressed out!

So the final day: Sunday. I thought it was fab, and I wish the whole week went as well. The GEM had gone by then, so we had all the space for our creations. It seemed as if more families and kids were attracted to us now that they could see what we were doing (rather than the GEM dominating the scene).

The hot tub worked fantastically. We started out with water of about 23C being fed into the inlet, and it emerged much hotter, at some points over 50C - much too hot for a bath!!

We had also perfected the science of solar cooking and our crowning glory was a lunch of (slightly crunchy but edible) potato salad and (slightly gooey but delicious) flapjacks. Plus some more boiled eggs.

I’m in a bit of a rush now (I’ve got a little side-project called a PhD to do…) so I’ll stop here. But I’ll get back on line later in the week to add more photos, so watch this space

In the mean time, why not try saving the planet with dirty jeans? http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,,1795544,00.html

Sunday already, and the sun is still shining. And I thought meteorologists jinxed the weather. The GEM is now gone, so we will be entertaining with our own creations today. I think it’ll be better for us in that we will find it easier to talk physics and not be sidetracked into domestic solar panel systems. But I’m gagging for a cup of tea, and we don’t have the 12V kettle from the GEM now
Richard Herring woz ere

It was rather bizarre last night, when I popped into the Sci at Night Cabaret, to see Richard Herring on stage. To all my old school friends who are reading this: he was great! Not quite as good as when we saw him in Fist of Fun, but he did walk straight past me when he went off stage as I was standing by the door!

Other hightlights of the cabaret were…
Elvis McGonnogall who won the Slam the Atom science poetry slam Friday night. I was disappointed that he didn’t repeat his Jeremy Clarkson poem - it was so spot on! But his David Cameron one was brilliant. I’ll have to look him up.
Wax Lyrical, the KCL Materials Lab who played the candles. This kind of stuff doesn’t translate too well so I’ll move on…

Eating out locally

Last night was our last night, so we wen’t out for dinner to celebrate. We were recommended a pie and mash place in town and so after our amazing hot tub foot washing experience, we strolled through town (amongst drunken Saturday night revellers, dare I say possibly football fans) to fill our stomachs.

When we got there, we explained to the waiter about our aims, and he said that all the food was ‘organic and from up the road’ - hurrah! It was very yummy as well, with plenty of veggie food and healthy too (less than 10% fat for a home made beef pie? Amazing, considering the pastry didn’t suffer for it.) Also great was the pider we drank, which they made themselves. (Pider is what you get when you cross breed cider and perry.)

Type and gripe

Actually, this probably won’t be as juicy as you might expect - I am a physicist at heart. So I thought I should talk about the group a bit, rather than sticking resolutely to the task in hand. I had a really got evening yesterday, which was our fist ‘normal’ evening together, just going for dinner. And I thought we got on pretty well seeing as Anth and me had not met either Andrea or Tom before this project.

The general mood hasn’t been so great other than that, unsurprisingly, as we are all shattered with the constant work. OK, so it might not sound like hard work but it is. It’s not like tedious hard work (revising, paperwork, dull meetings etc) but we are constantly on the go. And trust me, everything requires a bit of thinking if you’re trying not to use mains electric! If this were to happen again, I’d say the campers would need definite breaks. We were sitting down to lunch yesterday (obviously not wanting to be disturbed) and people still came over to us and asked questions. While we were stuffing our faces!

Some things I will do when I get home

I think the solar shower is a great idea. At home on Papilio (the narrowboat) we only use the immersion heater in the morning for showers. I think I’ll get a washing up bowl and make a lid and paint it all black to leave on the roof during the day. I can tell you, steel narrowboats get exceedingly hot in the sun, so I’ll have nice hot water for washing up with over the summer

I’ll definitely try and buy more local produce. I do mostly only buy British veg and fruit (aside from oranges and grapes. and avocados) already, but I will try and get local now as well. I’ll try and seek out restaurants that serve local food too.

I’ll look into solar panels for my boat once we’ve finished fitting it out.

There will be more I’m sure, but I think I hsould go now as the visitors will be arriving. And now for the final day!

Well today was pretty good. Tiring but good. This morning at 7.30am we were given a wake-up call by passers-by shouting “ra!” That wasn’t too bad because we had to get up anyway. Saying that tho… Tom managed to fall back to sleep whilst Michelle, Andrea and I set up the kit from the van and had breakkie. Despite us shouting at his tent he slept on and so we were concerned that he had got lost in the shower or died. Anyhow, on with the day…

We had more visitors today and I really enjoyed interacting with the families. We had all sorts and it was quite well rounded compared to the other days which were mostly school groups and older people. As Tom and Andrea mentioned, we had an issue with the plumbing on the radiator and so we had a slow start to the day. The hot tub we made was not the most ideal design but it suited what we had to work with. We used a radiator, a bath, lots of hose piping, two buckets and a BBQ that we have been using to cook our dinners on. I am far too tired to explain the setup properly but I’ll just blog about the day generally.

There were lots of mini crises with the construction of the hot tub today. First, we had a issue with the direction of the inlet and outlet to which we were trying to attach half a metre of copper piping to. Easily solved thanks to Martin from the Materials Library from King’s College - buy an L-bend attachment… Next up, how to support the radiator so that it stands vertically without being blown over (it was blustery today). Solved again by Martin and by Andrea - use some wooden supports either side… Next, how to make a perfect circlular hole in a bucket. A joint effort Michelle, Andrea and I used a stanley knife, blu tack and duct tape…

But finally we managed to get some water into the system, some coppiced charcoal on the barbie and hot water pumping into our bath! It was brilliant. It worked quite well. The only problem was we put the cold water in the tub to start with so that any water that was heated just joined the cold water. Hopefully tomorrow we’ll get the chance to try again but without the cold water slowing the prcess down. Michelle and I took geeky measurements on the water temperature and we’re looking forward to publishing our results in the near future:)

The hot tub was pretty fun. We got it up to 30oC!! Woo. But it got better… we found a great little restaurant that has pies and mash and it’s all locally produced! It was great and now I have to go because we are being booted out of the town hall… it’s closing and Mich and I might go swimming tomorrow morning in the Sandford Lido… we will see! Night:)

The title is witty and two-fold. I’ve been reliably informed that good blogging is all about being witty, and writing stuff that people enjoy reading. Perhaps I should bear that in mind more.

Anyway, first reason for title: Anthea got the “hot-tub” working - probably the most successful challenge of the lot. After spending 30 minutes trying to figure out how to bend a copper pipe 90 degrees without folding it, we eventually came to the conclusion that driving to B&Q to get a ready-made piece would be better. Once that little hurdle was crossed, the rest was easy and a fully-functioning hot-tub, heated by carbon-neutral charcoal…

And… I’m boring myself writing about it. I know this because the Festival newspaper people (who have just grabbed a few cheeky beers from the big fridge of freeness behind me) came to us for a podcast spot and never came back. So let’s go onto the other reason for the title… hot celebrity gossip!

I’m in the VIP room again. Yeah… Blogging is a great excuse to see how the high and mighty live. I can currently see Cathy Sykes talking to Richard Herring. I’m sure he’s put on weight! I can’t remember exactly what TV programmes he was in, but I think I would have been about 14 or so at the time, and probably found him HILARIOUS. He’s pretty witty. Cathy seems to find him funny. I think his hair’s a bit longer too.

I’m also currently surrounded by a group of well-dressed, attractive young professionals. You can understand my natural discomfort at this situation, being a physicist. But, it turns out they weren’t there for me, they were the Famelab finalists. Thinking about it, I probably could have worked that out. I’m sure they all did very well - apparently Jonathan Wood won it. Cambridge man, originally, before he moved to Leeds in a switch from physics to biology. Still, nobody’s perfect. He’s wearing the same shirt as he is on the website. Obviously some sort of lucky garment thing going on - probably Burtons, or Topman or something. Looks very smart, though (said Tom, in his sandals and shorts he’s been wearing all week).

Bugger! I’ve just been spotted looking at their profiles on the web. Do I come clean, try and use it as a conservation starter? Or do I just sit here like the lowly, smelly physicist I am? I think, dear reader, you know the answer.

Winston Watch

No sighting today. Though apparently, Adam Hart-Davis was about. He would have been amazing to have about on the tasks. I wonder if he is bigger or smaller in real life.

Time to sign off…

This week has been the sunniest week of the year so far, which has considerably aided us in our attempts to live in an environmentally friendly way. I’m just expecting it to be sunny when I wake up, it’s like being in Italy!

Anthea is in charge of making a hot bath today, and she’s fiddling around with a radiator, some bricks, and a bath tub. She’s missing some L shaped tubing, so the bath is not up yet. Mind you, in this weather a cool bath would be nicer…

I’ve just spent the most part of the day trying to make a crystal radio (above) to listed to the England match. I’ll admit it now, it’s not working. It’s my fault for thinking that a battery powered soldering iron was a good idea. If you haven’t already guessed, it wasn’t. After unsuccessfully attempting to solder the connections, I resorted to using masking tape to connect everything together. Which was probably not my best idea. We’re getting a real soldering iron tomorrow (we’ll run it off our solar/wind powered batteries in the Green Energy Machine). So watch this space to see if we can put together a very simple circuit.

Luckily, the kids loved the Rinky Dink, bicycle powered sound system. You’ve got to see it to believe it, but it’s really amazing and great fun. See www.rinky-dink.org for more.

Currently listening to the England match on the solar/wind-up radio, which is even more alien to me than camping in a town centre and cooking eggs with sunlight.

It’s much windier today, so the wind turbine has been rotating a bit. The downside is that the solar cooker got blown over while we were trying to fry onions in oil. Luckily they weren’t really frying, but more like being gently warmed. We had really nice boiled egg (from the solar cooker) and local tomato sarnies for lunch though – and I don’t really like boiled egg sarnies. The eggs were from Cheltenham so very few food miles there. For more on food miles, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_miles.

The wind made everything a bit tricky today actually. Paper blowing all over the place made me feel rather un-green as I’m sure a few bits escaped our grasp. And our post-it note message board almost got blown away along with all the great messages. We have asked the question “what is physics to you?” and we had some great answers. Like one 10 year old who said “understanding the physical world through mathematics”. He’d been to some talks at the festival!