science communication

What’s geology got to do with it? 4 – Tennis!

Flo Bullough May 30, 2014

As part of the ‘What’s geology got to do with it?’ series, Flo takes us on a tour of the links between geology and tennis! Warning: You may not want to read this if you have no interest in Geology OR tennis….

Now the disclaimer’s out of the way, I thought it was about time I married two of my greatest loves in life, Geology and Tennis. These two interests may seem completely at odds in terms of relevance, but as is the beauty with geology, it relates to just about everything!

So, summer in the northern hemisphere and therefore the two biggest Grand Slams in tennis are upon us! The French Open, the king of the clay-court season is currently underway and Wimbledon, the jewel (and one of the few remaning…) grass court tennis tournaments is just around the corner.

But for a sport containing so few tangible objects: a court, a racket, a person and a tennis ball, how does it relate to Geology? Well….

Tennis Courts

Court Philippe Chatrier Court at the French Open, the only Grand Slam played on red clay. Source – Wikimedia Commons

Professional tennis is played on 3 types of court surface, each with its own season during the tennis calendar. You have the hard court season, which dominates most of the year between July and February, beloved by Djokovic, then you have the European and North and South American clay court season from February to May, favourite of clay-court extroadinaire Rafa Nadal and then the shortest season of all, the grass court season, occupying all of 4 weeks in the summer, from June-July, once dominated by Federer and recently by Murray! The most obvious link to geology here is the clay courts, so how do you go about building a clay court and what materials do you need?

Red Clay Courts

Well first of all, very few clay courts are actually made of natural clay. This is because they can take a very long time to dry out (which you’ll know if you’ve ever done any pottery….). For this reason, the red clay courts as seen at the French Open and numerous other clay court tournaments are actually made from crushed brick or shale. Bricks are used because they absorb water less easily than natural clay and are produced from a mix made from Alumina (clay), sand, lime and iron oxide before being fired until dry.

Guga Kuerten being awarded a cross-section of the court in his last match at the French Open in 2008. Source – Tennis Served Fresh Blog

So if you want to build a clay court like the famous red-clay courts of the French Open, first of all you need to lay a base layer, this is covered with a layer of crushed stones, this is then overlain by a layer of clinker. This is then followed by a layer of crushed limestone and finally, the crushed brick forms the thinnest layer at the top. A cross section of the layering under the court surface formed the trophy that former French Open champion Guga Kuerten received when he played his last match at the tournament in 2008!

800px-Drying_mud_with_120_degree_cracks,_Sicily

You wouldn’t want the Philippe Chatrier court looking like this after a few hours of sunshine! Source – Wikimedia Commons.

Maintenance of the court after completion is a bit tricky as the clay needs to be constantly smoothed and watered in order to prevent dewatering cracks, a feature that many geologists are very familiar with!

Green Clay Courts

800px-Maria_Sharapova,_2008_Family_Circle_Cup

Maria Sharapova playing on the ‘green clay’ at the Family Circle Cup. Source – Wikimedia Commons

Not all tournaments use red clay, so called ‘green’ clay’ or ‘Har-Tru’ has become very popular in the United States. Har-Tru courts are similar in construction but are made from crushed basalt rather than brick meaning they are slightly harder and faster. According to their website, Har-Tru courts are made from ‘billion-year old Pre-Cambrian metabasalt found in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia‘. This rock has two important properties, which is that it is hard and angular which allows it to ‘lock together to form a stable playing surface’ and the hardness provides ‘exceptional durability’.

Tennis rackets

A modern tennis racket with a carbon fiber-reinforced polymer frame. Source – Wikipedia Commons

As with many manufactured items, the raw materials required to make them eventually leads us back to our natural resources in the ground. Earlier tennis rackets were always made from wood, with strings made from gut, but these days, advancements in materials technology means that the majority of professional frames are made from ‘high modulus graphite and/or carbon fibre while titanium and tungsten are often added to give the frame more stiffness and the strings are made from nylon (although Federer and Sampras are famous for using natural gut strings).

Supplies of pure titanium are rare although titanium ores such as ilmenite and rutile are much more common. Titanium is largely mined in the titanium-rich sands of Florida and Virginia as well as Russia, Japan, Kazakhstan and other nations. Much more rare is Tungsten, which has seen a rapid rise in price in recent years as supplies dwindle. Tungsten has recently emerged as a ‘critical’ metal with the majority of the world’s tungsten supply located in China. However Hemerdon mine in Devon which has been closed since 1944, is thought to host one of the largest tungsten and tin deposits in the world, and is set to reopen under control of an Australian firm in the near future with permit plans progressing this year.

For more on how a tennis racket is made: http://www.madehow.com/Volume-3/Tennis-Racket.html

Tennis Balls

Tennis ball advertisment, 19th century. Source – Wikimedia Commons

According to an article in the guardian published in 2013, manufacture of Slazenger tennis balls now has a 50,000 mile production journey before they end up in Centre Court at Wimbledon. Part of this journey includes the transport of various mineral resources. These include the transport of clay from the United States, Petroleum Napthalene (derived from coal tar) from China, Sulphur from South Korea, Magnesium Carbonate from Japan, Silica from Greece and Zinc Oxide from Thailand. This exemplifies not just the truly global nature of the manufacturing markets but also the complex importing and exporting of many natural resources for something as simple as a tennis ball.

For more on how tennis balls are made, see the ITF website: http://www.itftennis.com/technical/balls/other/manufacture.aspx

Tennis Net

Anatomy of a tennis net. Source – Do it tennis website.

The majority of the different parts of a tennis net are made up from either polyester or polyethylene, both formed synthetically. However, the raw materials required to synthesise both materials started off as extracted hydrocarbons. Polyester synthesis requires the polymerisation of ethylene which is derived from petroleum.

60 million tonnes of polyethylene is manufactured each year and is the world’s most important plastic. It is made by several methods by addition polymerisation of ethene, which is principally produced by the cracking of ethane and propane, naptha and gas oil, all hydrocarbon fractions. In Brazil, a plant is being constructed to make polyethylene from sugar cane via bioethanol.

And that’s how geology underpins everything we know and love about tennis!

For more information on the link between sports and geology, see the United States Geological Survey’s article on ‘Minerals in Sports: Tennis’: http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/general_interest/sport_mins/tennis.pdf

Citizen science: how can we all contribute to the climate discussion?

Marion Ferrat April 4, 2014

Until the turn of the 20th century, science was an activity practiced by amateur naturalists and philosophers with enough money and time on their hands to devote their lives to the pursuit of knowledge and the understanding of the natural world.

Hand-colored lithograph of Malaclemys terrapin, in John Edwards Holbrook’s North American herpetology. Source – Wikimedia Commons.

Today, scientific research is an industry of its own, carried out by highly trained and specialised professionals in academic institutions and research laboratories. From the outside, the world of science can sometimes seem like a mysterious one. A world that conveys wonder yet can feel impenetrable and somewhat detached from the reality of our daily lives.

But science is not that far removed from us, and anyone with an interest in anything from astrophysics to ecology and climate change can get involved and become a citizen scientist.

Citizen science is the engagement of amateur or nonprofessional scientists in scientific research, either through observations in nature, data analysis, or loaning of tools and resources such as computer power. Though the concept has picked up in recent years, citizen science is nothing new: Charles Darwin relied on the observations of amateur naturalists around the world to develop his theory of evolution.

1837 sketch by Charles Darwin of an evolutionary tree. Source – Wikimedia Commons.

From bird watching to galaxies

Citizen scientists can get involved in a number of projects, depending on their interest, how much time they would like to spend, and what facilities they are prepared to loan.

The spiral galaxy NGC 1345. Source – ESA/Hubble/NASA.

Astronomy lovers can participate in the Galaxy Zoo project, where members of the public are asked to help classify galaxies. Humans are much better at pattern recognition than computers, and scientists simply to not have the time and resources to analyse the thousands of images of galaxies captured by telescopes. Amateur astronomers participating in Galaxy Zoo lend their eyes to carry out this task and millions of classifications have been carried out through the project.

Citizen science doesn’t just happen on people’s computers. In the spirit of Darwin, many ecology and wildlife scientific projects make use of thousands of amateur observations. Since the launch of the Garden Birdwatch in 1994, bird lovers help the British Trust for Ornithology understand how birds use our gardens through weekly observations of what species fly into their back yards. For the BioBlitz project, professional and amateur naturalists get together for an intensive 24-hour classification of all species of mammal, bird, insect, plant and fungus found in a particular space.

Great tit in a garden in Broadstone, UK. Source: Ian Kirk, Wikimedia Commons.

Many people have the desire, ability and tools to contribute to research activities. By facilitating the communication between research, policy and the public, citizen science is another instrument for public engagement, with potential mutual benefits for all.

How can citizen science help with climate change research?

In the wake of devastating events such as storm Sandy, typhoon Haiyan, Australian bushfires or the recent floods in the UK, the big question on everyone’s lips is this: Is climate change to blame for more frequent and powerful extreme weather events?

Typhoon Haiyan captured MODIS on NASA’s Aqua satellite. Source: NASA, Wikimedia Commons.

The process of linking specific extreme weather patterns to global climate change, what scientists call attribution, can be tricky. In order to define a causal relationship (did A cause B? Did climate change cause the UK storms?), climate scientists need strong statistical proof. This requires thousands and thousands of simulations of a particular set of conditions, so that any interesting climate trend can be established enough times to be “statistically significant”. But extreme weather events are, by definition, a result of rare and unusual weather conditions and so a great number of simulations have to be run to produce statistically relevant data.

Such a large number of simulations takes time and produces terabyte after terabyte of data that must then be analysed. This requires huge computing resources and universities and research centres often do not have the physical resources to carry out all these simulations rapidly.

UK Floods, Staines-upon-Thames. Source: Marcin Cajzer, Wikimedia Commons.

The new weather@home project, set up by a team of Oxford climate scientists, asks interested members of the public to loan their spare computer time to help climate scientists run more numerous and faster climate simulations. It specifically aims to determine whether the UK’s wet winter and unusually strong storms were triggered by rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations and associated climate change.

How does it work?

For climate simulations to work, scientists have to tell the model where to start. For a chosen period of time to be modelled, they enter the set of particular conditions (“initial conditions”), such as atmospheric temperature, humidity, wind speed and greenhouse gas levels, that was observed at the start of the chosen period. They might decide to start their model one particular month and will use relevant data for that month as the model’s starting point.

Using these initial conditions, the model will then calculate how weather conditions evolve over time. Looking at the specific period of time when an extreme weather event occurred, scientists can model that same period thousands of times over in their climate model to see how often the model predicts the extreme event, and how often weather patterns unfold as normal, with no extreme event.

To determine whether this winter’s storms are linked to human-induced climate change, the weather@home team is running their model with two different sets of initial conditions.

– Real conditions that were actually measured (with high levels of greenhouse gases).

– ‘Natural’ atmosphere and ocean conditions that would have existed without the influence of human emissions.

By running thousands and thousands of these simulations, the Oxford team can then compare how frequently the extreme events occur in both sets of simulations and see whether the impact of human emissions have made these events more likely and/or stronger.

The weather@home project is on going, and the more simulations are carried out, the more robust the conclusions will be.

The first results are in!

The scientists are analysing the model results as they come in from citizen scientists’ homes, and anyone can monitor how the data evolves as more results are published on the website. Their first four batches of results are online here and it is possible to observe first hand how the plots are slowly building up as more and more data comes in. Thousands and thousands of simulations are still needed in order to acquire statistically significant results, and it is still time to join the project. The more the merrier. And the better scientists’ understanding of last winter’s extreme weather.

Snacking on climate

Marion Ferrat December 10, 2013

ClimateSnack is a new initiative for early-career climate scientists around the world to improve their writing and communication skills. Snackers get to write tasty climate blogs and discuss them in a friendly and interactive environment. Marion talked to three members of the Imperial College London group for the latest issue of GeoQ!

Good written and oral communication skills are quickly becoming a pre-requisite for early career scientists. Writing, presenting, interacting and collaborating are important for making contacts, developing research proposals, applying for fellowships and communicating one’s work. This is particularly true in a very publicised field such as climate change research, where inter-disciplinarity reigns, and the ability to convey ideas to wide ranging audiences is crucial.

But gaining these skills is not always straightforward. Writing and publishing online can be daunting, so can interacting with researchers outside of one’s field.

Born in January 2013 at the University of Bergen, ClimateSnack brings together postdoctoral and PhD scientists across climate change disciplines, and helps them improve the way they communicate their work in a friendly, interactive environment. In July, Imperial College London became the second institution to join what has now become a global network of hungry climate snackers.

Panorama of Bergen – Source: Sindre, Wikimedia Commons.

I joined ClimateSnack back in August and have really enjoyed chatting about climate change research with so many PhD and postdoctoral students across the college departments and climate disciplines. When thinking of what to write for the Young Scientists section of the GeoQ issue on climate change, I decided that it would be great to discuss this initiative that has taught me very much about communicating climate change research. So I interviewed three core members of the London snacking team and asked them to tell me more about what ClimateSnack is all about. Here is what came out of our interview!

“ClimateSnack is essentially designed to help early-career researchers develop their writing skills and their communication skills in general”, says Dr Will Ball, a postdoctoral researcher in the department of Physics and the founder of the ClimateSnack group at Imperial College London.

“At each institute that we have set up a ClimateSnack group, we physically bring together people in different areas of climate research. They will write thousand-word blogs about their work, keeping it very simple. In fact you want to keep it at the level that any other climate scientist in a different area of climate research would be able to understand. So as a solar physicist, I should be able to communicate my work to somebody working on, say, atmospheric dust”.

These blog pieces are the climate “snacks” that eventually get published online:

“Then we have a centralised hub that all the institutes publish through, which is the website”, Will continues. “Through that, people will be able to interact, get to know each other and give feedback on the actual writing. So they get better at writing, and also learn about the science that’s going on around them. That’s the concept”.

Sian Williams, a PhD student in atmospheric physics looking at dust plumes and land-atmosphere interactions, runs the day-to-day climate snacking affairs in London:

“We have a meeting once a month where people from different departments across Imperial College come together”.

London snackers Rachel White, Will Ball and Sian Williams.

“Every time, we have a few snacks. I try to encourage people to write them and then send them out to anyone who is coming to the meeting in advance, so that people get a chance to read what has been written and give feedback”.

Writing a snack can be a daunting but rewarding experience. Each author reads out his or her piece and the floor is then open to discussion. I remember that reading my own piece out loud was really quite scary! But it helped very much with improving the post, because one instantly picks up on sentences or expressions that don’t quite fit or contain too much jargon.

“People who have come together from different institutions say what they like about the articles, how they think they can be improved. Normally when you write something, be it for a journal or a website, you never really get that direct feedback, so I think it’s a really great opportunity”, Sian continues.

Dr Rachel White, a postdoctoral researcher in regional climate modelling, has recently published her very first snack, writing about the difficulties of simulating global rainfall patterns: “I actually found that it was easier to write than I thought it would be”.

Detail of the portrait of a young woman with writing pen and wax tablets, Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli – Source: Wikimedia Commons.

But putting pen to paper is just the first step: “Trying to check that you have really written what you wanted to write, and that people are going to understand what you meant, is the really interesting process”, Rachel adds. “That’s where the ClimateSnack meetings come in. Different people will have got different things from your article. You have to be quite careful so that everybody understands what you meant. That is a really interesting concept to learn and try and get you head around”.

Will is now an experienced snacker: “Publishing online was nerve-racking, but I developed a better sense of confidence in what I’m doing and in my writing”.

These meetings are not just useful for improving one’s writing, but also for placing early-career researchers in a safe, productive environment where they can hone their discussion and personal engagement skills.

“It’s not just writing. At these meetings you have to communicate, debate, argue, discuss, and you get better at that. And it’s in a safe environment. That’s where you build the confidence and then start moving out”, Will explains.

“Important, imaginative work comes out of collaborating with people who aren’t in your field”, Rachel adds. “Being able to discuss your research and describe it clearly to someone who is in a different field is incredibly important, at conferences, over the internet, everywhere.”

For Will, these communication skills are valuable even within one’s own field: “How many abstracts, how many summary papers have you read that are difficult to understand, even in your own field? [ClimateSnack] makes you more aware of the phrases and the words you use. I’ve noticed that in the way I write. I’m just a little bit more aware of what might confuse somebody.”

Source: Daniel Schwen, Wikimedia Commons.

ClimateSnack has grown at an incredible pace since January. “We are setting up at many other institutes in the UK, and have interest from several others in Europe and in the United States”, Will tells me. “So it’s going to expand very quickly in the next coming months”.

The success and uniqueness of ClimateSnack lies, I think, in its open and constructive environment, and in the opportunities it creates for early-career researchers to forge international collaborations with other climate scientists.

Concluding our interview, Sian adds: “There are opportunities for climate snackers to go on residential courses across Europe, which is really exciting because it’s not only building skills but again building collaborations with different people. And I think the main exciting thing is more people from different universities getting involved”.

Source: ISS Expedition 34 crew, Wikimedia Commons.

I have certainly loved being part of this exciting group and have learned so much about other branches of climate research. It has been fantastic to meet so many climate scientists from different departments and universities and I look forward to hearing about upcoming snacks at the next meeting!

Marion