Flipping Lectures

(Reflections on a life in science: #9b teaching at a university)

This is the second instalment of my end-of-career reflection on undergraduate teaching and learning – or, rather, on a few of the ‘experiments’ I undertook in that context.

Final year projects are often regarded as the highlight of a student’s time with us and I was fortunate in having a leading role in defining their ethos. They offer the scope for genuinely open-ended high-level research, albeit necessarily time-limited and confined to areas in which there’s a suitable academic guide. Although still applicable to the minority of students, it has always encouraged me to see how many of them achieve enough work of a high enough standard to find its way into co-authored research journal papers. For the four-year masters-level degree programme, wherein the project constituted half of the final year and was therefore a ‘big deal’, a particular innovation was the introduction of ‘role play’ into their summative talk. I set the whole thing up as though it was a research conference: abstract booklet, tight timetable … and the pièce de la résistance: bringing someone in to film the whole thing and then using the footage to provide feedback. From its inception, this conference model had the effect of encouraging students to raise their game. One of the most common student feedback comments established that this was simultaneously the scariest and also the most exhilarating part of the whole exercise. Even now, a decade or so later and after successive generations of our external examiners have praised the practice, my old department remains almost unique in offering the experience.

Getting a pat on the back is usually fun, and my one-and-only entry into the Faculty awards process yielded sufficient prize money to purchase the camcorder, microphones and other kit needed to consolidate the longer-term use of video-recording as a teaching and learning tool. However, whilst I gladly left all that kit behind me when I retired, I made sure to bring home the mugs presented to me in the annual awards made on the basis of student nominations.

In some senses however, the role-play idea only really took flight in the context of the group projects undertaken by our three-year BSc students. Groups of six or so students would each settle on a topic to work on and then elect a Project Manager who would ‘pitch’ the idea to me – in my role as CEO you understand. Once we’d agreed the overall scope of the work they would define their objectives in writing, including work allocation frameworks, a rational Gantt Chart and so on. From that point onward I would interact only with the Managers (- unless something went horrendously wrong, which was exceptionally rare); progress was monitored via the minutes from their weekly meetings. Key to embedding this role play was to convey the idea that the group succeeded, or didn’t, as a group: at assessment, marks were given to the group rather than to the individual (- again, with rarely-invoked safeguards). Furthermore, peer assessment played a part; for instance, a group’s presentation at the end of the whole thing – also recorded for feedback by the way, subject to all the appropriate ethical permissions – was evaluated by the other groups. There was an unmistakable ‘buzz’ to these group projects. A fairly natural development became possible about three years ago when an admirable colleague (George Dobre) secured pump-priming funds from the Institute of Physics to create links between our students and industry and other external organisations. The whole group project concept is now set within joint work with a variety of places ranging from the aerospace industry to the NHS and local museums.

The group projects also provide me with my final example, which deals with the matter of teachers learning from their students. A group had decided to work around the topic of science in movies, and they expanded on this by designing a demonstration experiment projectile motion to illustrate one particularly poor bit of ‘Hollywood physics’. They trialed their experiment in a local school and with their first-year peers, and got some very positive feedback. I was so taken with what they achieved that I began to incorporate and develop the use of movie clips, snippets from newspapers etc. in my own teaching in order to try to spark discussion and analytical appraisal. Within a year I was extolling its virtues at teaching conferences. Somehow, a journalist in the USA heard about it and wanted to incorporate the idea in an article he was writing. Thankfully, the student group’s project manager was still around, by then as a postgraduate research student, and we jointly participated in a 45-minute ’phone interview with the journalist. The story made the front cover of the magazine, which was nice – but the bigger story remains centred on the long-term contribution made by my students on the way I presented physics to their succeeding generations. Such fun.

Science News was, and I believe still is, an American science magazine published by the Society of Science and the Public. The group project manager whose team kicked this whole thing off contributed hugely to the interview; she is now a lecturer in physics herself (here).

My innovative swansong was a move away from the more conventional lecture, which was an experiment unnervingly described as ‘brave’ by several colleagues. Having made audio recordings of my lectures for several years so that students could download them for revision (and perhaps for other good-natured purposes - see YouTube clip here) it was a natural step to volunteer to join the small team spending a year testing out the proposed new system for video-recording lectures. The trial went well; it was relatively easy for the lecturer to use once we’d ironed out the bugs, and my students loved it. Interestingly, the fear that students would simply not attend lectures, in favour of simply watching online, never materialised: evidently, the ‘live show’ is still worth getting up for. With a couple of years of video-recorded lectures in the digital bank, a tempting new experiment became feasible: FLIPped lectures. This is an approach which, in essence, has students study the next bit of the syllabus at their convenience in advance of the timetabled ‘lecture’ slot, and then use the face-to-face time they have with the lecturer to explore aspects they couldn’t fully understand, work through related problem-solving exercises and so on. My students had been asking for more supported/guided problem-solving work for quite a while, but the traditional timetable simply couldn’t accommodate extra sessions; FLIPping the lectures not only made this possible, but re-enforced the value of personal study and of studying alongside friends. There was additional support via small-group Peer Mentoring sessions (here) for those who wished to avail themselves of it. This was a scheme I introduced into the department a few years earlier within which, after some training, more experienced students held learning support drop-in sessions for their early-years peers. As for any novel approach, and arguably especially for a scheme that dropped altogether the teaching philosophy endemic to most of their education hitherto, there were a few sceptical students. However, on the whole the feedback was overwhelmingly positive; this was underlined by the end-of-year results: for the first time, as far as I can recall, absolutely no-one failed the FLIPped module. I’m delighted to say that a handful of my ex-colleagues are taking this approach forward within their own teaching; it’s good to know that there is a positive legacy.

This screenshot from my university’s e-learning web pages reveals a further legacy in that a few minutes from one of my own lecture recordings is still used to demonstrate the software to aspiring lecturers; quite flattering really.

I have studiously stayed away from any attempt at a review or appraisal of the more generic aspects of teaching and learning developments during my career: it’s a huge topic and would need far more space than is practicable this pair of blog posts. It is perhaps sufficient to note that I began teaching using a very conventional ‘chalk & talk’ approach – almost unaltered since before I was a student in the early ’70s – within which the technology was limited to the occasional use of an overhead projector. Students took handwritten notes; there were almost no handouts and neither were copies of the notes or other support material available on the internet (which simply wasn’t available then, any more than PCs were). However, as I pointed out in the first instalment of this two-part reflection, as ICT capability and capacity developed so it became possible to explore and exploit its potential, and by the time I retired video-enabled FLIPped approaches could readily be realised – along with a fast-emerging use of smartphones and …


Earlier posts in this series:
1) The Girt Pike – beginnings and transitions.
2) Do Labels Last a Lifetime? – people and other influences.
3) Nomadic Research: random walk or purposeful journey? – a timeline in research.
4) Tools of the Trade – instruments and gadgets.
5) Suitcase Science: travelling in hope – tales from a travelling scientist.
6) Why so many? – gender balance in the research team
7) Committees: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly – making things work: discussion, consensus and decision?
8) Large-scale Facilities for Small-scale Science – the big ‘toys’ I’ve helped to build and to nurture
9a) Experiments in Teaching and Learning – teaching at a university (part 1)

Experiments in Teaching and Learning

(Reflections on a life in science: #9a teaching at a university)

More than six months ago I promised a colleague that I would record a few reflections on my three-decade academic career. With this post I hope to complete what was originally envisaged as three or four posts, but which has evidently grown to nine. Given that my work with undergraduate students has been such a major part of my career, it’s perhaps not too surprising that this turned out to be a longer post than the average post, much longer. One post has therefore become two, with the prosaic sub-headings 9a and 9b …

Teaching (and learning) has always had a special place in both my heart: from the school teachers who inspired me (here), and despite those who did not, through to the final university lecture I delivered earlier this year, and to my continuing outreach and public engagement activities (pick almost any of my posts, e.g. here). There must be a focus however, and in the context of this post I intend to concentrate on my teaching as a university lecturer – one of the many aspects of my job that I loved. I’ll try to highlight a few examples of the sort of innovation (experimentation, or 'playing' in other words) that I have stumbled upon during my three decades as an apprentice to several masters, including my students. In one sense, nothing has changed: after all, the fundamentals of Physics at the undergraduate level are largely the same now as they were at the start of my career. There have been changes to the syllabus of course. These are usually introduced to cull material considered as ‘redundant’ in order to provide ‘space’ for new topics – and skills – as their perceived importance emerges, or to rework the way in which the material is handled. Some of the more noticeable changes are arguably those associated with modes of delivery and of study. In part, although not central in my opinion, this is driven by a change in the culture of the profession. One might contrast my first lecture, when I had been thrown in at the proverbial ‘deep end’ a couple of weeks after taking up my junior lectureship, to the more overtly constrained nature of today’s three-year probationary period in which extensive training, monitoring and mentoring support is provided within a ‘lightened’ workload. This supportive environment is potentially of significant benefit; it was not, however, a part of my own experience. Thus, my motivation owes almost nothing to formal training programmes but rather a lot to a cocktail of inspirational colleagues, a desire always to be doing something new, and for want of a better description, a fear of being seen to do a bad job. In other words I pick up on interesting ideas, I don’t like intellectual stagnation and I had a need to battle ‘Imposter Syndrome’. It is also important to note the fact that, irrespective of one’s motivation, much of this change has been technology-enabled in one way or another.

The manifestations of these driving forces need not be confined to the lecture theatre or teaching laboratory of course. Indeed, the very first memory I have of raising the eyebrows of more ‘traditionalist’ colleagues was when I introduced Earl Grey tea and ‘proper coffee’ into my weekly small-group tutorial sessions with first year students, and encouraged them to bring along biscuits or doughnuts. We also had a habit of rushing through the set-piece assignments in order to get to some more interesting contemporary science. Years later, one particularly successful graduate who had been a part of this regime recalled her introduction to Earl Grey tea with such fondness that I donated my teapot to her when I retired; she is herself now a talented physics lecturer, so perhaps the habit will live on in some way. On the larger scale, I remain proud of the fact that I used what influence I had accumulated by the mid ‘90s – so, about a decade after arriving – to establish a large and well-situated room in our department as a ‘study room’ for our students, and to equip it with decent furniture, a suite of PCs and copies of key textbooks. Even in the face of a change of building and the intense pressure on space that exists nowadays, I am delighted to be able to say that the Study Room is still going strong. In truth, it has become so integral to the working life of our students that it would take a brave person indeed to close it down.

The Study Room as it looks in its present form (during the Easter vacation when its use drops off for a week or two). Amazingly, despite several moves, the compilation of cartoons on the walls have survived from when I pulled them together almost 20 years ago (from here); they depict events associated with science and technology as seen through the eyes of newspaper cartoonists from the ‘60s onwards.

However, the principal focus of this post was to be innovation in teaching. My first really bold step started in the late '80s and was associated with exploring computer-aided learning of basic maths. and of scientific programming (in Fortran 7, should you be interested). A novel hypertext software package, Guide, written by someone at my own university, became available and I was keen to explore its potential. I possessed the lecture notes and a pile of textbooks, but had precious little time available to turn them into the student-paced self-learning tools I envisaged. I invoked then a scheme I have since used many times in various guises: to recruit a suitable group of motivated students to work as a team in order to pull everything together under my guidance. For two or three successive Summer vacations, and using small amounts of money I had managed to obtain from one organisation or another (e.g. the Nuffield Foundation), I paid these small groups first to draft and then to ‘polish’ the material. It worked wonderfully well: the project students, several of whom wanted to go into teaching as a profession, gained some great work experience and I ended up with working software packages. The programming course was successfully deployed immediately and continues to be used to this day, albeit within a more modern hypertext framework (HTML), and further developed and modified by my several successors. The maths. package never really saw the light of day: almost as soon as it became ready for ‘field- tests’ our course design changed in such a way as to render it redundant and I took on new teaching duties. C’est la vie. It survived for a few years as an online tool for those students who wanted to use it for their own purposes. These were the very first examples at my university, and amongst the first in the country, of an entire lecture module being presented in this way. The key reason it was appreciated by our students was the freedom it gave them to work at whatever pace suited their abilities: the autodidacts and those already competent at part or all of the syllabus could race forward, whilst those needing to go over things more slowly could do so – and I was released to focus my efforts on those students needing the most help. It saved me absolutely no time overall, far from it, but I remain convinced that the learning experience was improved for the student. For anyone tempted to suggest that this was a forerunner of today’s MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course), I can only say that I sincerely hope not: in my opinion, a key element to a university education is ‘social’ – learning with and from others, working within a team and so on, and I would always want to preserve this.

There have been exciting ideas and plans that have left only an ethereal legacy, or none at all, which is par for the course. One such project, which I led during the late ’90s but which never did come to fruition, was called Refreshing Physics (see here). This was predicated on the use of context-led learning: presenting physics not subject-by-subject in the traditional sense but through the context of ‘real-world’ phenomena and experimental data. For example, using natural phenomena such as earthquakes and storms as the setting for the physics of waves and vibrations, electric fields, angular momentum etc. (see here). Part of the philosophy was to make the transition between school ‘A’-level Physics and first year university work a lot smoother than is typically the case; we aimed to ensure that undergraduates were more enthused by Physics and less intimidated by it. Moreover it was a key tenet that we establish a strong advisory input from those companies and organisations that employ graduate physicists. Lauded by everyone we showed it to, from government ministries to professional bodies like the Institute of Physics, and by the educators we presented it to at conferences, we nevertheless failed to raise the financial backing required to explore it fully and to test it out. We found ourselves in a funding ‘Catch 22’, with our own University saying we needed to get external funding and the external organisations saying they expected, as a minimum, pump-priming funds from our university. To this day I remain utterly convinced of the value of this teaching and learning approach, but I have long since resigned myself to the fact that it’ll not happen – certainly not on my watch.

One of the very first things the Refreshing Physics team organised was an all-day meeting between some of our undergraduates and year 11/12 pupils (then called sixth-formers) and their teachers in order to understand better what the school-university transitional problems might be and how we might mitigate their negative effects.

The second installment will be uploaded in about a week ...

Earlier posts in this series:

1) The Girt Pike – beginnings and transitions. 

2) Do Labels Last a Lifetime? – people and other influences. 

3) Nomadic Research: random walk or purposefuljourney? – a timeline in research. 

4) Tools of the Trade – instruments and gadgets.

5) Suitcase Science: travelling in hope – tales from a travelling scientist. 

6) Why so many? – gender balance in the research team

7) Committees: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly– making things work: discussion, consensus and decision?

8) Large-scale Facilities for Small-scaleScience – the big ‘toys’ I’ve helped to build and to nurture

Large-scale Facilities for Small-scale Science

(Reflections on a life in science: #8 the big ‘toys’ I’ve helped to build and to nurture)

Although my early-stage research career was mostly ‘laboratory-bound’ (see here for example) almost all of the last 35 years or so have been spent within the world of major national/international research facilities. I’ve already written a little about the associated ‘joys’ of what a former colleague labelled as suitcase science (here) and have alluded, many times, to the science and the partnerships that came out of it (e.g. here and here) – but I want here to talk about the facilities themselves. One of Spike Milligan’s many irreverently witty books had the title “Adolf Hitler: my part in his downfall”; what I intend here is more along the lines Major Research Facilities: my (very small) part in their success.

The significance of this short video clip will emerge later; suffice it to say that it marks and represents a key point in my story: the installation of an instrument – specifically, a spectrometer I designed, tested (in the USA) and commissioned. It shows me at about the age my son and daughter are now; I recall trying not to look at the camera or to trip over my own feet.

The obvious first issue is to define what ‘facilities are. I suspect the answer to such a question, were it to be posed, would vary a little from one scientist to another and certainly from one field of endeavour to another. However, in my area – the study of materials – one would be describing research equipment of a scale larger than could sensibly be provided at a level less than national, and more often than not at a multi-national level. Thus, within a financial, managerial and administrative framework appropriate for a large-scale project, there will typically be a purpose-built suite of instruments, and their associated support systems, which all rely in one way or another on a major central or core instrument. For example, one might have an electron accelerator at the core with many specialised instruments utilising the intense beams of x-rays and other light which it generates; the UK’s Diamond Light Source is one such facility. Thus, a facility will comprise many instruments, each with a sizable community of scientists/engineers who’ll compete for access in furtherance of their respective research team’s needs: hence the title (which is, I hasten to add, a phrase coined by others). I have both used such facilities, in the UK and elsewhere, and helped in their development and their strategic management. However, it would be a rather laborious – perhaps downright tedious – post were I to attempt to cover all this in detail; so, first a synopsis and then maybe an example or two …

A common factor in the successful management of the x-ray and neutron facilities I’ve had such a close professional relationship with is that, on a day-to-day basis, they are run by scientists, technicians and engineers who understand why they are there and not just how they ‘tick’. I should know, for four years in the early ‘80s I was one of the ‘beamline scientists’ at the UK’s neutron source ISIS and designed installed and commissioned one of its very first suite of instruments (aka beamlines); more of this later. Since then, I have been a member of, or have chaired, committees and advisory bodies charged with considering both tactical and strategic choices in relation to facilities both in the UK and elsewhere in Europe. (I wrote previously about some of my experiences with committees: the good, the bad and the ugly; see here.) Furthermore I have been instrumental, if you’ll forgive the pun, in several proposals for new instruments/beamlines; more often than not this involved working closely with a whole community of fellow scientists – each of us contributing our expertise towards the common goal. Some of these proposals came to fruition in a fairly direct fashion, others had the effect of spurring the relevant facility into action by identifying a scientific need, and others simply fell by the wayside as better and stronger proposals emerged from elsewhere. In passing, I might record the fact that ‘failed’ bids are always a disappointment; it always hurts a little, but it’s a necessary part of the scientific life to applaud the proposal our peers regard as better (exactly as we must the theory or data or ideas that go beyond, or improve and therefore supplant, our own).

SPIDA is an example of a proposal which came to nought, ostensibly. It was for a neutron scattering instrument to study the amorphous and liquid materials at the heart of my team’s research and that of many other teams in the UK and elsewhere. The approximately 30 pages of the proposal I submitted on behalf of this group of scientists detailed the scientific need, outlined the design of the instrument and costed the project at £780k (at 1992) prices. It wasn’t progressed at the time, but it did encourage folk towards the eventual design and construction of an instrument that would do all we had originally envisaged, and then some (see here). There are analogous stories on the x-ray side of things as well; the x-PDF instrument currently under construction at the Diamond Light Source (see here) would provide one of them.

TOSCA was a somewhat different story. Having supported an earlier, unsuccessful bid for a spectrometer which would enable the detailed study of hydrogen atom vibrations in materials, I was asked to lead the UK part of a joint British-Italian proposal for this even more ambitious instrument. This 40+ page proposal came with a £842k price tag for the UK contribution (1996 costs; I wonder what the equivalent sum would be now, 20 years later …) – and this one succeeded. For a few years, until ‘ownership’ was formally transferred to the ISIS neutron source, see here, there was a plaque on a nearby wall declaring that the instrument ‘belonged’ to my University; an odd sight. The collage shows the postcard, printed to show off the new instrument and sent with a note of thanks to all the project’s supporters, above a shot of me and the two scientists who were to run the TOSCA beamline (John Tomkinson and Stewart Parker) – we’re shown peering into its bowels on the day of its inauguration; to the right is the front cover of an Italian magazine which also celebrated TOSCA’s arrival. (In case the music buffs amongst you were wondering: yes, parts of Puccini's wonderful opera were indeed played during the opening ceremony.)

Although I’ve alluded to this part of my career before (e.g. here, third figure/caption) I’ll share a little more of my distinctly hands-on involvement with one particular beamline: the electron-volt spectrometer, eVS. This was my workplace ‘baby’, a term employed in the conscious remembrance of the fact that both my daughter and then my son enjoyed their own respective baby months as the project unfolded. Undertaking the scientific specification, overseeing the engineering design, tendering for construction, the assembly, testing and evaluation took almost three years. Included within this, and ‘helped’ by government budget cuts at the time which ‘encouraged’ me and others to offset costs by working out of the UK, my family and I went on an extended secondment to the USA – taking my newly-delivered eVS with us in a pair of huge wooden crates. After 15 months, the eVS returned and was duly installed within its beamline; as this was the last of the so-called ‘Day 1’ instruments for ISIS and someone realised that none of the earlier installations had been filmed, the event was recorded for posterity within an in-house documentary film on the ISIS facility’s construction. The 15s clip is shown near the head of the post (with the permission of the STFC, who currently run the UK’s major research facilities). The remainder of the post hereafter is told using a storyboard of images and their captions: it is the tale of how one particular beamline, mine, came to be.

From early blueprints through to fully-engineered spectrometer: this was eVS prior to being boxed up, along with a small mountain of accessories (- including a complete set of metric tools since only imperial-sized versions would be available in the USA). 

From the freight terminal at the airport and into the drab concrete building shown top left (see here for their current, much-altered, website), and thence into the cavernous experimental hall under the mound behind it, came the crates containing the eVS and its bits and pieces, which had to be unloaded and then craned into the hall – its home for the next 15 months.

The next task was to build the beamline, including all the neutron shielding and so on; I was shown how to drive a forklift truck and a crane in order to move stuff from the storage areas, and then had to put into practice my childhood training from my bricklaying dad …

The build in the USA progressed, including the collimated beamline which defined the beam of neutrons from the proton-accelerator source to eVS and then the vacuum pumps and detector electronics required to collect data. Yes, there is the hint of a large hammer (top left) – all the very best engineering methods came into play – but notice also the more refined surveyor’s theodolite (top centre).

Back at ISIS in the UK, eVS’ final home was of course taking shape at the same time as I was doing the initial designs etc. The place from whence its high-energy neutrons would eventually emerge out of the ISIS target/moderator assembly is shown top left at an early stage of construction. To the right is a somewhat later image, after much of the shielding and concrete had been added; eVS’ beam came from the second port from the left – the faint line on the floor indicating the beam’s direction. At the bottom is an image shot along the eventual beam direction from inside the target/moderator building; next to it is the analogous shot, taken much later, after eVS’ return to the UK, through the instrument itself and towards the target. It would be impossible to take such pictures in so simplistic a fashion today: the vantage points are now hugely radioactive.

One of the more enduring legacies to this project was the novel design of collimation. The key was to reduce to a minimum the hydrogen content of the inner surfaces of all components; our low-resin boron carbide aggregate formulation, ‘crispy mix’, went on to be used in other later beamline designs. (For the uninitiated, whilst hydrogen is very good at slowing neutrons down, boron is excellent at absorbing them once they are slowed; iron shot is added to the outer section in order to absorb gamma rays.)

Much concrete, steel and boron-loaded wax shielding tanks came next: more obstacles to clamber over and under. The final stages included building a floor above all the various beamlines/instruments, and then painting the entire place in readiness for the grand opening ceremony by the then Prime Minister – many months after the whole place had started running in earnest, and after I had left to start an academic career elsewhere.

That’s all folks: aligned, wired up and ready to roll. The eVS beamline is shown as the second (larger) red block as one goes counter-clockwise from the 3 o’clock position in the diagram.

P.s. I moved from ISIS to the University of Kent in 1985, but eVS continued to be developed by my successor. A while after he himself moved on to new pastures, and the decision was taken to re-work the beamline in its entirety. I was a little sad to see all my work ‘scrapped’, but I agreed entirely with their decision and went on to support and applaud the excellent science that came from the new instrument (see here). One of the things that make facilities like ISIS and Diamond world-class is the continual commitment of their staff and their user-community towards innovation and the desire to move forward – that, it seems to me, is a fact worthy of support and applause.


Earlier posts in this series:
1) The Girt Pike – beginnings and transitions.
2) Do Labels Last a Lifetime? – people and other influences.
3) Nomadic Research: random walk or purposeful journey? – a timeline in research.
4) Tools of the Trade – instruments and gadgets.
5) Suitcase Science: travelling in hope – tales from a travelling scientist.
6) Why so many? – gender balance in the research team
7) Committees: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly – making things work: discussion, consensus and decision?

People in Glass Houses

Although intermixed with a few other topics en route, I have now posted seven themed personal reflections on my career from the perspective of an ‘apprentice’ retired person (see here for the most recent, which includes links to the other six). I need another break from this defined theme; maybe I’ll go back and write the final two – on teaching and on the building and development of major national/international research facilities – or maybe I won’t: watch this space. For this particular post I wanted to reflect on the way in which my interests as a research scientist have even seeped into playing MineCraft (for the unitiated, please see the promotional video below) with one of my grandsons. Moreover, I’ve adopted what is, in the context of my blogging, a novel way to present the material – I hope you enjoy it.

At the outset I ought to confess that I dislike computer games as a rule: any game, any computer platform. I am not very good at them and they don’t interest me – facts which are likely to be coupled I suspect. However, the chance of spending time with either of my grandsons is a powerful incentive, and slowly, very slowly, the older of the two – who is a MineCraft ‘master’ at the age of eight – has trained and coaxed me enough that I can join in with simple tasks in the virtual world initially set up for him by my 30-something son. (The process of learning from an eight year-old is itself interesting, but I’ll defer that to another post.)

A 1-minute promotional video outlining the essence of the MineCraft concept.

What emerged very quickly, as I graduated from following his avatar around and acting as the hapless target for various forms of combat practice, or the stool-pigeon for one of his cunning traps, was the realisation that I am as inspired by glass in the virtual world as I am in the research realm. To illustrate this, using a series of screenshots as the basis for a narrated slideshow tour, I present here the first house I built. I realise that this tongue-in-cheek exercise shows conclusively that I’d never make a good estate agent (- realtor for the few who read this in America) and that vlogging is unlikely to become my forte, but I hope that will be forgiven. The key thing is to discern my all-too-obvious fascination with glass. Although there’s not a great deal of overt glass science in this, I have already uploaded several posts on the subject should you wish to learn a little more:
Celebrating Disorder
Something good this way passed
Beyond ‘Fun with Flags’
Finding the needle

My tongue-in-cheek narrated slideshow created to accompany the blog post (- 5 min. long).

What next for my small corner of this virtual world? I think I may unleash my inner Capability Brown and try a little landscaping, followed perhaps by my inner Gertrude Jekyll for garden layout and then exploit my inner ‘Farmer’ George III in order to expand into farming; who knows. In the meantime, to put my paltry efforts into perspective, my grandson has recently built a highly credible version of the International Space Station and placed it in geostationary orbit above the virtual world: it has working airlocks, solar panels and a docking bay for the fully functioning supply rocket which visits regularly from the ground. Oh well, c’est la vie.

Committees: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

(Reflections on a life in science: #7 making things work – discussion, consensus and decision?)

Being a member of a small body of people who have been ‘set aside’ to consider a themed set of issues on behalf of the wider group is ubiquitous in professional life, and beyond. If they are established and then led well, and comprise people of outgoing vision, they can be invaluable. I have been involved in more committees, working parties, advisory bodies, consultative groups, etc. than I would now have any hope of enumerating. To the best of my recollection, this activity began whilst a teenager at school (e.g. helping the local manifestation of BAYS – the British Association of Young Scientists, which no longer exists; a contemporary manifestation may be found here however). In the four decades that followed, there has been next-to-no period of time in which I haven’t been involved in this sort of activity in one guise or another. In my circle of academic colleagues I think it is true to say that I have had at least as wide a set of experiences as anyone, more than most. On the basis of these experiences I feel entitled to state, emphatically, that all committees are most decidedly not ‘equal’.

As an undergraduate in the ’70s I found myself responsible, as secretary to the student Physics Society, for identifying, inviting and hosting visiting speakers – which was a lot of fun as I not only got a ‘free’ dinner once a month but also got to eat it in the company of some of the big names of the day. This was, I suppose, an early example of being able to take enjoyment from the work: this still seems to me to be an entirely laudable approach since everyone tends to benefit more in the longer term. Similarly, as a postgraduate research student I discovered another benefit of getting involved in decision-making bodies – this time as the representative of my peers on the committee that oversaw space and other infrastructure allocations (called the House Committee for reasons I never did fully understand): it provided a vehicle for learning in detail about how the place ‘ticked’. These two early lessons have coloured my subsequent approach to committee involvement: if possible, learn and have fun.

Sadly, in the intervening period, I have also been obliged to join bodies which, although bearing the same title, caused a great deal of frustration, even anger, and stress as they wallowed ineffectually through swamps often of their own making. Perhaps one might call these ill-formed creatures the ugly face of committees, in which a lack of cogently defined purpose or terms-of-reference – or an unwillingness to adhere to them – leads to … well, to nowhere of much significance. (See here for a chuckle – just to lighten the mood a little.) These bodies are a ‘black hole’ for time and energy and are best avoided if one’s not willing and able to help to sort them out; oftentimes the only practicable way forward is to disband the committee altogether and take stock of whether a replacement is truly needed. I’ve also had to suffer my share of committees which have been chaired either by ‘tyrants’ or by those unwilling or unable to curb other members who themselves behave like tyrants or bullies. These are the bad ones, in which, for instance, it’s often hard for early-career people to have a voice or to grow in their professionalism; prejudice of various forms will often lurk in its undergrowth (e.g. the sort of sexist comments noted in an earlier post, here). I still remember keenly an occasion early in my career when a chair had, in essence, cynically set me up in order to ‘draw fire’ so that he could step in as the apparent hero of the hour; I didn’t fall for that one again. Committees which are over-powered by a small number of dominant self-serving people are best avoided if one has the choice – or, better, if one is strong or determined enough, the intimidation might be reformed or its effects mitigated through measured challenge. I make no claims to be a perfect committee chair, or indeed committee member, but I can honestly say that I regard it as important that we all try to learn, not only from our mistakes but also from those we perceive arising from others. My impression, for what it’s worth, is that things are not as ugly or bad as they used to be in these regards – perhaps people are indeed trying to learn from the mistakes of a more deferential and hierarchical past. Having said that, it’s clear to me that analogues of these problems do still exist; they are visible to those who have eyes to see.

However, I would much rather focus on the good. Thankfully, there’s a lot of it about. I have often been able to meet and to work alongside talented and creative people, the chance to learn, and the promise of being able to make a positive contribution to the wider good. The irony is that the latter benefit is often paired with the need to share in the burden of making difficult decisions that will inevitably upset some, even as the community as a whole hopefully gains. The ‘higher’ the committee, the more potential for professional reward and the more likely it is that someone will be upset. Without question, the pinnacle for me – in both senses – has been the work undertaken for the UK’s Research Councils and the facilities they are responsible for. I have written before about the neutron and x-ray research facilities that have played such a major role in my working life (see here, here and here for example) and it has been a privilege to contribute to their development. Although my principal contribution has been through the science published from results obtained through them, I have also contributed directly to their capabilities and their management. The former arose from the often leading roles I played in the provision of new instrumentation – about which I hope to write at some time in the future – and the latter, of more relevance to this post, through one committee or another. Whether through the tactical committees/panels that decide which of the many high-quality bids from research groups for access are successful, or via committees that seek to provide more strategic science-focused advice to facility managers, these activities have definitely ticked all three of the ‘boxes’ I defined at the start of the paragraph. Positive though these experiences were, I have been given the chance to practice this approach at a higher level still …

The whole of science research depends on funding. We need equipment, chemicals and so on, we need to be able to fund PhD research students and postdoctoral associates to do much of the work, and in my case there’s a need for those larger-scale facilities that must of necessity be provided nationally or internationally. Only the best can be funded from the finite budgets made available, and that means someone has to decide which projects go ahead and which are set aside or closed down. In the UK it’s the Research Councils that have that responsibility. I have had the privilege of contributing to the work of the Science & Engineering Research Council (EPSRC) since the 1990s through several standing, and some less satisfactory ad hoc, committees deciding on the allocation of many millions of pounds across a spectrum of research groups in the physical sciences. However, it’s my more recent committee work for the Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC) I want especially to write about. Quite why I was invited initially to join their Physical & Life Sciences committee (known as PALS to its friends) I couldn’t say, and at this level the scope for ‘Imposter Syndrome’ to cripple me was extensive. Setting those (very real) reservations aside, my time as a member and then as chair of PALS, and the subsequent years I spent on their highest-level scientific body – Science Board – ticked the boxes ‘big time’. To put it into perspective, the STFC has responsibility for all the neutron and x-ray facilities I alluded to above, but also for the UK’s major laser facilities, for our share of CERN and a suite radio and optical telescopes around the world. To be a part of strategic debate and decision-making at this level provided an astonishing array of opportunities to learn new things across a broad spectrum, to observe and work with some of the most talented and constructive people I have ever come across, and to share in the attempt to make a positive and constructive contribution to science in the UK. I remain grateful for these opportunities. I ought to add for completeness that these years were very far from the proverbial ‘walk in the park’. Prioritising excellent scientific projects and areas isn’t easy at the best of times, especially when such a wide range is involved, but if one adds to that the need to do so in the run-up to a government Comprehensive Spending Review (e.g. here) and at a time when budgets are under severe threat and it becomes all too clear that the potential for discomfort is high. Despite all the late nights and long days, the soul-searching and anxiety, the frustrations and annoyances, I wouldn’t have missed it. Here, although far from perfect, I found the best examples of leadership and well-prepared and selfless discussion, inclusive consensus and decision.

And then I retired ...


Earlier posts in this series:
1) The Girt Pike – beginnings and transitions.
2) Do Labels Last a Lifetime? – people and other influences.
3) Nomadic Research: random walk or purposeful journey? – a timeline in research.
4) Tools of the Trade – instruments and gadgets.
5) Suitcase Science: travelling in hope – tales from a travelling scientist.

6) Why so many? - gender balance in the research team

Why so many?

Reflections on a life in science: #6 gender balance in the research team

I am acutely aware of the sensitivities surrounding gender balance in the sciences, and this post makes absolutely no attempt to define or to solve anything. It is a brief reflection from one retired scientist, in one corner of the academic world, of a few decades in which some wonderfully creative and talented people joined, and then moved on from, one particular research team; it’s nothing more than that.

In one of her many excellent posts, entitled ‘Why so few (still)’, Professor Athene Donald offered a handful of survey-derived statistics which made for depressing reading, and in the process defined for me the title to this post. One of these survey results suggested that two thirds of Europeans “think that women do not possess the required skill set in order to achieve high-level scientific positions”; the proportion is roughly the same for the UK alone. Initially, I found this difficult to take on board in the sense that I have always found it hard to ‘get my head around’ such a stance. The University I recently retired from is led by a woman of considerable talent, Professor Dame Julia Goodfellow, herself a scientist, and the department I was in (here) has a healthy gender balance in its staff complement and has been awarded an Athena-Swan Bronze Medal. Women of seniority are not a rarity on campus, even in the sciences/technology areas (e.g. here). Further afield, I have worked with staggeringly talented people of both sexes to whom I, and those around me, would freely offer professional praise. Having said that, a few seconds thinking through some of the decisions I’d witnessed and the comments I’d heard from colleagues in the earlier years of my career (and a few which, although often implied rather than overt, were still in play more recently) changed the mental image a little. In his novel ‘The Go-Between’, published in the year of my birth, L.P. Hartley coined the phrase “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there”. Maybe they do, but that alone is insufficient as a justification for anything. As a historical example, I recall a male scientist prone to declare that women simply didn’t have the sort of brain required to study Physics (- I got into trouble for openly challenging this view by the way). One is significantly less likely to hear those kinds of views expressed overtly these days – at least, I’d hope that is the case – but there evidently remains a problem. The stereotype regarding how men’s and women’s brain are put together, sometimes associated with the title of the book ‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus’, holds no water (see here for example, or here). However, the effects of ‘unconscious bias’ persist; thankfully, there is a growing awareness of the need to counteract its effects (see here and also here).

Athene Donald has written and spoken often on matters of equality in the sciences (e.g. here for another recent article), and I applaud her tireless efforts: I am most definitely a ‘fan’. Having said that, it was the direct challenge posed to me by two fellow scientists via Twitter that inspired this particular themed post in my ‘career reflections’ series: Dr. Emma Barney and Professor Jenny Martin, who also writes and speaks on matters of equality/diversity in the sciences.

The Twitter exchange behind this post was brief, but to the point. Note the time delay between their questions and this attempt at a response: whoever says there’s plenty of ‘free time’ in retirement! (On that particular aside, I did squeeze out an update on my new season of busy-ness: here.)

Until I read Jenny Martin’s original tweet I’d never thought of calculating the end-of-career summative proportions of women and men in my former research team. Her follow-on comment was entirely reasonable: on the surface, the figures do seem to label my team as an ‘outlier’ in the physical sciences. From my own – necessarily limited – observations over the years, the ratio of women to men at the levels relevant to us here is more typically closer to 1 in 3 or 4. (The ratio appears to vary widely between disciplines, with Physics suffering far more than Chemistry for example, and all the ratios seem to worsen as one progresses from an initial undergraduate degree through the PhD phase and into postdoctoral research and beyond. My research team principally comprised PhD research students and post-doctoral research fellows/associates; with its roots in materials physics/chemistry, the team members were drawn from both Chemistry and Physics backgrounds. I’ve alluded to this background fact before, e.g. here and here). The additional questions then set my thoughts into a chase for rational answers: was it a conscious decision on my part to aim for this, are there any ‘secrets’ behind the evident gender balance, and given the fact that all involved were in relatively junior fixed-term posts whilst in my team, what could I say in terms of the longer-term situation regarding ‘seniority’ attained after they had moved on?

I’d love to be able to set out a cogent set of pithy reflections at this point, but the honest answer is that I don’t know why my team ended up with this balance; I have no crystal-clear explanation; I have no great secrets to share.

Apart from the naïve effects of ‘busy-ness’, the other reason why there is such a gap between accepting the need to try to address the questions posed to me and posting this piece was the need to do a little research. The obvious first port-of-call had to be via e-mails to all the women who had worked within the team during my time as an academic and with whom I’m still in touch (- thankfully, quite a few). I asked them to look back and to try to sum up what had drawn them to the team in the first place, what their experience had been whilst a part of it and what impact this had had on their subsequent lives. Interestingly, they didn’t fully explain the unusual gender balance either. What they did offer has led me to a few generic conclusions, none of which is in any sense new or ground-breaking – unless I have missed something. The thought of quoting their words directly did cross my mind, and for the most part they seemed fairly relaxed about me using the material, but for one reason or another I decided against this approach. The single most significant point that shines through is that their choice to join my team was influenced by exactly the same sort of factors I’d expect to hear listed by the men who joined the team: the topic was of interest, there was evidence of sufficient research opportunities/funding and of prior published output, and that, for the aspiring PhD students, there was cash available to cover a studentship. There was a hint that the existing presence of women in the team offered some sort of positive advertisement, but this hinted point was not stressed. It’s a rather similar gender-independent picture when it comes to their time within the team. In one way or another, they all commented on the benefits of a friendly and professional working environment and the availability of opportunities to broaden their experience through working with collaborating teams at other universities and research facilities. (The latter, by the way, involved working away from home-base doing our experiments: we travelled hundreds of miles, stayed in hostels and hotels, worked ridiculously long hours and all-too-often eat the wrong foods – an excellent arena for getting to know people; for more, see here.) Guidance and support – both for the duration of the PhD or postdoctoral contract and at key career development stages thereafter – also featured as being important.

There was, however, one key comment which did seem to resonate with what I’d like to believe: “you could not have cared less if I was male, female, … it was all about the joy of the shared intellectual challenge”. When I read this I was immediately reminded, albeit whimsically, of the ongoing #LetToysBeToys campaign, which has spawned some great material on Twitter (see also here). Perhaps we ought simply to #LetPeopleBePeople in this context – a sentiment which emerged within an exchange of thoughts with another of my correspondents I might add.

The final challenge initiated by Jenny Martin’s tweet concerned destinations. This is not an easy question to address, in part because my information is incomplete but also because the associated time-periods are so variable: the first woman to join my team, as a PhD student, graduated in 1989 whilst the last woman in the team is still getting to grips with her first job after she got her PhD as recently as 2012. We are therefore not comparing like with like. However, I am encouraged by the fact that, as far as I am aware, the next step for all but one was into an area of their own choosing – a statistic strikingly similar to what I know of the men when they too moved on. Some have stayed in science, or a cognate field, whilst others have chosen alternate pathways; this is eminently understandable, irrespective of gender. After all, why not try to do what one is good at and enjoys, and celebrate serendipity (as I have done throughout my own career, e.g. here). For some people, men as well as women, training and working as a scientist is but one phase in their lives. Undergraduate and then postgraduate qualifications, and the fixed-term postdoctoral research contracts that may follow, can represent entirely sensible steps on a winding pathway that eventually leads away from a career in science altogether. The value of those steps is not diminished by subsequent choices, but the quality of that later life may nevertheless be greatly enhanced by what went before. As examples, I can cite career destinations for these talented women scientists which include voluntary work as a tax advisor, senior school science and mathematics teachers, a university professor, a laser specialist in a national laboratory, a university science outreach officer, a senior company executive*, … An important caveat I must add here is that a person’s life surely ought not be defined on the basis of work or career alone, or perhaps even primarily on that basis (speaking as one now ‘retired’): we are all worth more than that.

And finally, for something incompletely different (noting the abuse of a much-loved Monty Python phrase) take a look at this post on a vaguely topical subject: ‘Girls Explain Star Wars To You’ – however, be warned, it contains spoilers for the new film ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’.

* see here – which, amongst other things, is currently engaged on a project for CERN building the machines that will be used to build the next generation ALICE detector. This respondent, who graduated with a richly-deserved PhD in 1993, also recommended some pertinent reading, which I here forward: ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’ by Daniel Kahneman. 

Earlier posts in this particular series:
1) The Girt Pike – beginnings and transitions.
2) Do Labels Last a Lifetime? – people and other influences.
3) Nomadic Research: random walk or purposeful journey? – a timeline in research.
4) Tools of the Trade – instruments and gadgets.
5) Suitcase Science: travelling in hope – tales from a travelling scientist.

On a Break (from retirement that is)

A greater spotted woodpecker is hanging on tight to the bird feeder outside my window. There’s a late autumn gale blowing intermittent rain and the first sleet of the season across my garden – and elsewhere one presumes – and his beak-full of peanut won’t be won without a fight. Tenacity, and hunger, will win the day. The electricity supply failed half an hour ago and I’m left feeling glad of the remaining daylight and of our new log burning stove, and of pens and paper in order to record these musings. The power cut will, I sincerely hope, be long over by the time I finish drafting this post – but it feels good to be making a start …

The woodpecker, or one just like it,

in action in kinder weather earlier this year.

One of the first thoughts that comes to mind as I sit, pen in hand, is of the language used by the ‘facilitators’ running the pre-retirement course my wife and I attended some months ago. They wanted everyone to couch their language in terms not of ‘retirement’ but of ‘going freelance’. At the time it sounded more than a little contrived, although I disliked it somewhat less than the word ‘facilitator’ itself. In the two months that have elapsed since the transition – call it retirement or going freelance, take your pick – I begin to see their point. For example, one of the enjoyable, if time-consuming, hobbies I wanted to be able to indulge more was writing: posting here in bobᴙeflected of course, but also in other ways. As it turns out I have been so busy with other good or necessary pursuits that I’ve simply not had the connected time necessary to sit and think and write … until the power cut, which neatly and effectively severed a part of my day from its former constraints. What I perhaps ought to do in such circumstances, with time on my hands, is draft the next in the planned sequence of reflections on my life as a scientist and my career as an academic. This series which, to recycle a description coined by Douglas Adams, rapidly became ‘a trilogy in many parts’, is in truth well on its way to completion in that five of these themed pieces have already been uploaded (see the list below or the links within the 5th post, here) and the other four are sketched out. However, I’m going to take a break and review my first two months of retirement instead.

Apart from being able to spend a bit more time with family and friends, which has been wonderful by the way, and doing a little bit of very necessary autumnal catching up in the garden, I have found myself with several new things on my plate. There have been several words-of-wisdom offered me in this regard, ranging from “Don’t say ‘yes’ to anything in the first six months” to “You’ll wonder how you had the time to go to work”; reality has comprised a mixture of both stances. Some requests or suggestions were easily side-stepped, like the not-so-appealing suggestion that I post a scientist’s appraisal of this year’s John Lewis Christmas advertisement (here, but there are some parodies out there as well, e.g. this). In a similar vein is the invitation to the South East Physics Network awards ceremony (here) on the basis of having been nominated for their Public Engagement Achievement Award – it’s hard to drum up the motivation for a self-funded trip to a London event when one knows one’s not the winner. On the other hand, time has been spent in ways that were predicted and have been enjoyable, like beginning to consider the telescope I have been promising myself for so many years. I could add to this the talk on glass I gave to almost 100 people in Milton Keynes and a return visit, behind-the-scenes, to the new Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth (- more on this later, with pictures).

However, there are tasks that have emerged that simply cry out to be done because they are intrinsically important, or in some other sense ‘necessary’. In my case, these have tended to arise from requests from, or on behalf of, friends and close former colleagues, or they arise from on-going commitments which just happen to need attention now rather than later. For instance, there’s a PhD student in Cambridge working on some hard-won and particularly inscrutable data I gathered several years ago in the USA (here) alongside her supervisor (- the latter, Jacqui Cole, was at the time a member of my research team). The student is feeling her way through some unfamiliar territory and needs timely advice, and I’m keen to see the data through to publication, so this takes priority over mere blog posts. Similarly, there are two colleagues who have played formative roles in my career progression through the years – I have mentioned them in earlier posts, e.g. here – who are individually to be honoured by the publication of a special edition of appropriate science journals (known as a festschrift in the trade): how could I not contribute something. Add to that editing some text written by another former member of my team, now a professor of Chemistry back in his home country of China, as he prepares to launch a conference in Beijing, as well as a few other small ‘tidying-up’ tasks from my former department and the apparent lack of time for my ‘retirement treats’ is rendered more understandable. 

Having said all that, there has been a little creative writing going on. I composed a short article at the request of a good friend of ours in California – the request coming via my wife, who had first met our friend when she and her husband came to the UK on a Fulbright Exchange in the 1960s. I have no idea where the draft will end up since it links Fulbright to Kings Canyon National Park to a town called Sanger, and all via the story of a home-grown sequoia tree … It’s in the hands of our friend now.

I promised something on our visit to the Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth (here). I have written about my research team’s modest contribution to the on-going efforts to conserve Henry VIII’s favourite warship within earlier posts (here and here) but that was all some ago and I relished the chance to catch up with the current state-of-play. Our host for the day was conservation manager Eleanor Schofield, who first got into this particular line of work whilst working with my colleague Alan Chadwick in our research group. As a bonus to wandering around behind the scenes with Ellie, the day also afforded me the chance of chatting with two people who were there at the very start of our scientific input to this amazing project, Mark Jones and Simon Ware. There is a wealth of background material available on the Mary Rose Trust’s website, naturally, but also via the BBC (e.g. here, in which some of the research we undertook is gently introduced, here and here).

The very first research paper in what became a significant series to be published out of our links with the Mary Rose Trust appeared in 2008: outline details may be found here; as per my usual practice, the people who did the bulk of the work – often students – are listed first and the ‘overseer’ comes last.

Geoff Hunt’s painting of the Mary Rose sinking.
(Credit: Geoff Hunt PPRSMA; accessed 1/12/15)

I don’t want to expand the post by repeating all this existing material; the key point is that, about a decade ago and after Alan and I had been asked to help the Mary Rose Trust understand the basic science associated with conserving their archaeological marine timbers, I set about kick-starting a research programme. Before getting the larger sums of cash required to fund a PhD student and then to recruit a talented materials scientist like Ellie we had to demonstrate the feasibility of our physical sciences approach. We needed to use major, leading-edge X-ray facilities (e.g. here and here) in order precisely to understand the so-called ‘sulfur problem’ whereby sulfur from sea-bed silt, which has suffused the timbers over centuries, changes its chemical state once the timber is in the air to become damaging compounds like sulfuric acid. In addition, there is the potential for iron, from the original ship’s fixings, to catalyse that chemical process. Alan and I already had a good track record in competing for access to the facilities, but needed ‘pairs of hands’. Thankfully, the Worshipful Company of Shipwrights agreed to my request to fund some work by talented undergraduate Physics students Kate Wetherall and Rob Moss and the rest, as they say is history. (The proof of this particular pudding may be seen in their lead-author positions on that very first publication I cited above.) As the research moved on from the initial phase of understanding the basic mechanisms in the specific case of Mary Rose timbers to devising mechanisms to slow or halt the damaging chemical processes, so the research moved further into mainstream chemistry and my involvement necessary reduced. My interest, however, has never declined, and it’s against this background that my wife and I stepped into the new, purpose-built, Heritage Lottery-funded museum back in September. The remainder of the post represents my inadequate homage to the on-going conservation work behind the public museum spaces, steered by Ellie, and the over-arching collections management by Mark and by Simon and fellow team members. The photographs were taken either by me or by my wife, and all with permission of course.

The day started well: coffee with Mark and Ellie in a room boasting a door decorated using an old conference poster derived from our joint research.

With the rigging of HMS Victory just about visible before us, it’s time for Ellie to sort out security passes for us: the Mary Rose is hosted within the historic naval dockyard, and some of the places we’re to visit are not in the publicly accessible zones.

Whether one ought to refer to this as ‘good fortune’ or not, the Navy’s need to dredge an approach channel meant that it was urgently necessarily to raise this Tudor anchor from the Mary Rose site. It’s now undergoing the initial processes associated with conservation. For a metallic object like this it’s a matter of soaking away the salt and removing any accretions from the surface. For organic material, which in the case of this unique Tudor warship is primarily wood, but also leather, rope etc., the physical conservation process is far more complex (see below) and bacterial effects also become important.

Through one of the largest volume vacuum drying chambers around go all the organic artefacts small enough to fit inside: huge numbers of timber and carved/worked wooden items like longbows and eating utensils, leather and other clothing, ropes (like the fragment of an anchor rope shown here) etc. Indeed, there were unopened boxes of new longbows raised from the wreck site and currently safely stored – one only needs a few for the museum displays. The conservation process is similar in broad terms for all such items: long periods in water to remove the salt, followed by drying in such a way that the object doesn’t ‘shrink and disintegrate. For smaller items the vacuum drier can be used, and a waxy substance called polyethylene glycol (PEG) can be added to ‘replace’ the water and provide longer term stability. In addition there are stone cannon balls by the score – far too many to go on display …

In the case of the remaining ship’s timbers – essentially, the half of the ship that was protected by being buried under sufficient silt that the effects of tides, and of all those oxygen-loving living things that ‘feed’ off dead wood – conservation has been a Herculean effort from the very beginning. Once the ship had been raised in 1982 it was placed and supported in a dry dock in Portsmouth harbour (the concrete blocks under her are shown lower left – interestingly, even this dry dock is a listed heritage site) and ‘24x7’ spraying commenced first with water and then with increasing levels of ever-more waxy PEG (see above). As an aside, it is apparently the case that the Mary Rose Trust was the UK’s largest consumer of PEG for the duration of this phase. This went on for years, and was still in progress during and after my research involvement. Building the new museum around the Mary Rose’s dry dock home coincided with turning off the spray pumps – an honour which fell to Ellie (here). However, there must remain a screen between visitors and the ship for a while longer as we enter a protracted final period of drying. This in itself is a complex process, requiring additional supporting scaffolds, laser monitoring to detect signs of movement and a huge air conditioning system – the controls for which may be seen lower right, housed in the lower reaches of the dry dock.

There are lots of stunning artefacts on display in the museum, which can be previewed on their website or in person, but many more in storage, undergoing conservation or at the heart of on-going studies. Innumerable glass objects have come up from the site of the wreck, but most of them are of later origin, often Victorian, and which simply happened to settle on the site. The bottle fragment shown above, alongside part of the meticulous record cards associated with it which Simon Ware curates so well, was found below decks as it were and so is definitely Tudor. Given my passion for glass (e.g. here), this fragment immediately caught my eye as Simon open the drawers in one of his extensive storage areas. I imagine that this would have been an expensive vessel in its day; it’s finely blown, although subsequent exfoliation has marred its beauty a little. The scientist in me was curious about the composition though. It is in essence a fairly ‘standard’ soda-lime glass, most silica but with added sodium (Na, and in this case potassium, K) to reduce the melting temperature and calcium, Ca, to make it workable over a broader range of temperatures. The precise mixture of these components, and the presence of other elements such as magnesium, Mg, can give us a forensic-style ‘fingerprint’ relating to the origins of the glass. The addition of iron, Fe, would have coloured the glass – the precise colour depending on the chemical state of the iron. The presence of aluminium, Al, is a little unexpected however. There’s a great deal of potential for further research here I think … oh, but I’m retired now.

At this point I’m minded to return to the woodpecker: sometimes there is a need to hang on and to focus on the good things in front of us. The first couple of months of retirement have been full, even busy, and there continue to be louder and more protracted ‘echoes’ from my pre-freelance career than I had expected. However, all-in-all, I’m grateful for the reassurance that there will be no shortage of interesting things to engage with – even if that means, in effect, taking a break from ‘retirement’ now and again.

Existing posts in the career-reflections series (i.e. the series I ought to have been finishing):

1) The Girt Pike – beginnings and transitions.

2) Do Labels Last a Lifetime? – people and other influences.

3) Nomadic Research: random walk or purposeful journey? – a timeline in research

4) Tools of the Trade – instruments and gadgets.

5) Suitcase Science: travelling in hope