Below is a list of lectures that are currently available:

The Science of Unintended Consequences

Prof. D Raine

Duration: 1 hour

Number of students: 20-100

Year Group: A-level

Accidents are, by definition, unintended, and can provide interesting data for the science of man-machine interactions (the accident at Chernobyl for example). Failures to predict the obvious can arise from the difficulty of extrapolation of data (for example the dotcom stock-market crash). Or when the (apparently) obvious is not what happens (for example, in the effect of taxation on government revenues). In many of these cases the unintended consequences arise from complexity, whereby environmental influences generate unpredictable behaviour from simple rules.

This talk illustrates some of these points using simple models and their applications to examples such as ant colonies, the stock market and the prison population.

How the Earth Came Alive

Prof. D Raine

Duration: 1 hour

Number of students: 20-100

Year Group: A-level

Life appeared on Earth in a surprisingly short time interval between 3.8 billion and 3.5 billion years ago. Such is the complexity of even the earliest life forms that this cannot have been a chance event, but must be the result of evolution operating at the molecular level. There are two competing theories concerning the path such evolution might have taken: that it first produced self-replicating molecules, the precursors of modern DNA; or that it first produced non-living cell-like structures.

This talk will show how evolution, acting on simple components, can produce complex structures. The rival claims of the two theories are presented and the implications for life elsewhere in the Universe is discussed.

Who Ordered This? Particles and Strings

Prof. D Raine

Duration: 1 hour

Number of students: 20-100

Year Group: A-level

The current understanding of particle physics is a picture, called the standard model, that can account for the experimental observations in high energy collisions, but is of a complexity that (hopefully) does not constitute the final answer. The standard model seems to require an unnecessary multitude of particles and contains a large number of values for quantities (such as masses) that it cannot explain. In addition, this model does not include gravitational effects. The solution may lie in super-symmetry, and in the realisation that the fundamental building blocks are not point-like particles but string-like objects. This promises to simplify the overall picture at the expense of extra dimensions of space.

This talk will attempt to explain in as simple terms as possible how quarks make matter, what their super-symmetric partner partciles are, how strings come in when we think about gravity and what extra dimensions have to do with it.

Signals from Creation: The History of the Universe

Prof. D Raine

Duration: 1 hour

Number of students: 20-100

Year Group: A-level

Climate and Climate Change

Dr J Zalasiewicz

Duration: 1 hour

Number of students: 20-100

Year Group: A-level

The climate of the earth has been changed continuously throughout its long history - but within limits that has enable life to persist through about four billion years. Today, the climate of the earth looks set to change through human activity. This presentation will look at the evidence of past climatic and environmental change - which has sometimes been dramatic - to see what lessons may be drawn, as we struggle to understand the changes currently affecting the enormously complex atmosphere/ocean/earth/biosphere system on which we all depend.

Fossils and Fossilization

Dr J Zalasiewicz

Duration: 1 hour

Number of students: 20-100

Year Group: A-level

This talk will begin by introducing fossils and their many uses. It will then examine the various ways in which ancient life has been preserved so that we can recreate past worlds.

Prehistoric Weather

Dr J Zalasiewicz

Duration: 1 hour

Number of students: 20-100

Year Group: A-level

Was it sunny in the Jurassic? Or chilly in the Carboniferous? The rocks hold many clues to past weather systems and help us to predict the future climate.

Geological Catastrophes

Dr J Zalasiewicz

Duration: 1 hour

Number of students: 20-100

Year Group: A-level

Rock strata preserve evidence of a range of catastrophes from small and local to global. This talk depicts the evidence and shows how the course of life on Earth has been affected by geological catastrophes.

Do you need Mathematics to understand Computer Science?

Prof. Rick Thomas

Duration: ~1 hour

Number of students: 20-100 

Year Group: A-level

The idea here is to give some idea as to what studying computer science at university will entail with regards to the mathematics requirements. Many students (particularly those with some experience of computing) do not realize that the use of mathematical techniques in computer science is growing rapidly. The talk will attempt to give some idea as to why this is the case and to describe how mathematics fits in. The talk will also point out that the sort of mathematics we need is different from most of that traditionally studied at A-level and it will also question our normal ideas as to what is pure and what is applied mathematics. We will not go into detail as to what sort of mathematics is needed but will attempt to give a flavour as to what is required here. The talk may be of interest to mathematics students to see how their subject is applied or to those students wondering whether to pursue computer science as a degree subject.

Problems that don't have solutions

Prof. Rick Thomas

Duration: ~1 hour

Number of students: 20-100 

Year Group: A-level 

This talk starts by examining the following quotation: "Put the right kind of software into a computer, and it will do whatever you want it to. There may be limits on what you can do with the machines themselves, but there are no limits on what you can do with software." The main aim of the talk is to debunk this myth. There are problems which, by their very nature, cannot be solved by a computer (or, at least, by any computer yet devised). This is an area known as "computability" and it is clearly important for people to have an awareness of this issue as there is no point investing resources in trying to solve problems for which there is no solution. The idea of the talk is to give a gentle introduction to the subject so that people can get a flavour as to what the issues are. The talk may be of interest to mathematics students to see that there are problems for which no method to solve them exists or to computer science students to see that there are problems for which there are no programs which can solve them.

Why Study Science ?

Duration: ~30 Minutes

Number of students: Any

Year Group: Year 11,12,13

A talk about why we need scientists, what they do, the types of career open to Science graduates and some information on how to choose and apply for a degree course at University.