Science and Engineering

Status:	Active, open to new members
Leader:	The Science and Engineering team
Group email:	Science and Engineering group
When:	Monthly on Friday afternoons 1:30-4:30 3rd week in month
Venue:	Felbridge - St John's Church Hall
Cost:	Termly fees apply

OUR NEW NAME - THE RATIONALE - EXPANDING OUR BRIEF

Please read the following summary: Science and Engineering 2023-24

The group is not full; newcomers are always welcome. Please get in touch if you would like to join us.

Click on this link to send us a query=> The Science and Engineering team

Each monthly meeting may or may not have a subpage: YES if there is an active link, but NO if no active link. Ideas for future talks will also appear either on this separate page our in your regular newsletter.

SCI-ENG Programme ideas

If you have any ideas please send us them by the email link at top right

THE FUTURE (AND RECENT) PROGRAMME

SCI-ENG Jan 24	Crossrail: Clive took us through the concept and the timeline of Crossrail with particular emphasis on signalling. The picture opposite shows the disruptive potential of civil engineering in the middle of the West End	Clive Kessell
SCI-ENG February 2024	Life and death of a light bulb. John reviewed the history of lamps and lighting, drawing on his own experience as a luminaire development manager and a logistics practitioner	John Wells
SCI-ENG March 2024	Science in Horticulture. Brian explained his background and l entertained us with tales of a life in horticulture at Febridge	Brian Jeffries
SCI-ENG April 2024	Journey Into Space	Stuart Hatch
SCI-ENG May 2024	Dave Prout spoke about his introduction to Engineering, with interesting anecdotes, and tales of Meccano - the "Real" original construction toy	Dave Prout
SCI-ENG June 2024	John Wells took "Dog and Bone" - the history and technology of the phone - to the next level with an update to 2023, plus a look at Superfast Fibre and more
SCI-ENG July 2024	Change of ideas! Our last meeting of the year proved to be a step too far! So many people apologised in advance for absence that we had an open discussion meeting instead
SCI-ENG Sept 2024	New season! Our first meeting opened on 20th September opened with a presentation by Mike Vivian and Ray White together. Brilliant exposition from two real aviation experts. Discussing a real aviation disaster. 28 members attended and five new members appeared and were made welcome.	Mike V Ray W
SCI-ENG Oct 2024	Powering the Shannon. Tony Jones presented a talk on the development of the RNLI's Shannon flagship lifeboat	Tony Jones
SCI-ENG Nov 2024	Darwin and the Honeybee. John Gee presented a talk on one of Darwin's puzzling problems. In his “On the Origin of Species” Charles Darwin, Kentish beekeeper, identified a potential problem for his theory of evolution by natural selection. It proved to be an issue that occupied biologists for a century-and-a-half and still provokes debate. What was the problem? Has it been solved? How might Darwin view the state of things today? This talk was part history of science, part zoology of bees (and other animals), part modern evolutionary biology and just a smidgin of speculation.	John Gee
SCI-ENG Feb 2025	Medical Screening. Cheryl Mason managed to break our "duck"! Congratulations on stepping up to give us not only her first talk to the group, but also a first use of MS PowerPoint. The talk covered all aspects of medical screening and provoked some lively discussion. Given the heavily male proportion of members and their (advanced) age, the discussion on identification of Prostate Cancer was particularly relevant. *GET YOUR PSA CHECKED ANNUALLY!* It is free and you can insist that your GP gives you a test. PSA testing isn't the gold standard - MRI scanning is yet to be rolled out, but will be much less invasive.
SCI-ENG March 2025	NEXT TALK: The Rise and fall of HS2. What went wrong and why? What did we really need HS2 for? Why introducing new fast rail systems in the UK is a particular problem. We welcome a return visit from Clive Kessell - ex BR Telecommunications chief and avid rail columnist. As usual, Clive's talk will probably be contentious: he loves throwing stones into a quiet pond!
SCI-ENG April 2025	Electrifying Britain: This talk could have many different titles. The problem we are investigating is the very clear need for an exponential growth in the supply (and smart, flexible distribution) of electrical power. Whichever way you look at it, with the growth of demand for electricity and the phasing out of fossil fuel power supplies, we need to dramatically increase the supply of electricity from renewable (or nuclear) sources, and to ensure that we retain the flexibility that we currently have from gas turbine sourced energy. This by no means a trivial problem!
SCI-ENG May 2025	THE HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY OF SUBMARINES: A talk by retied submariner Nigel Manger. His talk will cover the early development of the Submarine through to the present day of Nuclear Submarines. It will be mainly related to the Royal Navy, but will reference those submarines of Germany, USA and Russia. It will cover the submarine conflict in WW1 and WW2. I will also cover my experiences serving in two diesel submarines and a nuclear powered attack submarine as a Mechanical Engineer and on the Naval Staff in the MOD together with a detailed examination of 5 submarine disasters.

Starting with the AUTUMN term 2023-24 we abandoned monthly payments at the meeting.

We requested a £10 subscription to cover the first term. The reason was simple: members sign up to join a group but do not attend meetings. We must cover our costs, and the room hire is £60 monthly. Therefore, at £2 per member attending, we need a minimum of 30 attendees. We immediately reduced from over 70 to 59 registered members. Asking for a subscription up front weeded out around 10 non-attenders. It has really worked well! Each term we estimate the likely number of members attending in the coming term(s) and compute a fail-safe termly fee - to be collected either in cash or by bank transfer at the first meeting of the new term

Paying the fee online - bank details

SORT CODE: 40-52-40

ACCOUNT: 00035004

Reference: Your membership number and "SCIENG". If you can't remember your membership number, use your surname instead.

Previous talks

Don’t forget!!! You can still access some previous presentations by clicking here==> Sci & Tech Past Presentations and Talks

Remember that this is YOUR GROUP. Please consider joining our little management team for the interest group. You can contact either Ray or John.

We welcome anyone who is prepared to help put together the group's future programme of talks, discussions, visits and demonstrations.

The 2022 Sci & Tech questionnaire - results analysed

We asked our interest group members what they liked or disliked about our presentations; where we met and more. As a result we have a great deal of help in managing the group - when and where we meet; how often; what subjects are interesting, etc.

The 2022 Survey

Brainstormed ideas - our source list

Check out the list of 252 items. If you can find one to interest you we would be delighted to present it as a topic - or you could do it yourself!

Brainstormed ideas

Past presentations

The group has met since about 2005, so we have managed to keep a number of past presentations as PDF files. To find out more click the button. Where past presentations call up a video it cannot be shown in the PDF file. But we can always find the original if you are interested.

Past presentations