An umbrella, a tin can and a thermometer: what a party that was...

I suppose, in some ways, that is the point. Sunday night we were treated to Prof Brian Cox’s initial view of the Solar system on BBC2. I have to admit I was looking forward to it. His Horizon episode on the Big Bang Machine (LHC) at CERN was a classic Horizon.  That episode of Horizon was leavened with humour taking a good stab at explaining what the CERN Lord of the rings thing was all about. Unfortunately the big bang machine just went bang just over a year ago. It’s taken a year to put the very expensive CERN accelerator back in working order.

For those of you that missed the news items. After the Large Hadron Colider's (LHC) very first few runs it did a poor interpretation of a kettle. The hot under the collar machine boiled off a ton of liquid helium in very short order. Whist this event provided employment for the maintenance and design engineers for a year, it did very little for the Physicists. They were looking forward to results to analyse and play with. Prof Cox is one of the Physicists at CERN and he has taken the opportunity to make a TV series about the solar system during the enforced sabbatical. Apparently he’s is going to get another opportunity next year! Back to the thermometer...

I sat down, figuratively speaking with a box of popcorn in hand for a feast. As time went on, indigestion grew. There seemed to be lots of figures: billions and billions and billions of them in fact. A billion is an overwhelming number, I’m not sure a billion, billion, billion, billion is any more so. The Prof has an engaging and ready smile. He does awe quite well too. I’m sure he speaks highly of me!

The Sun is big, not just big as in 7ft tall, a sky scraper or even Everest, its mind bogglingly big and it’s a big subject. It’s an important one. When the Sun goes in, we either feel a little sadder or get ready to party to cheer ourselves up. Did I mention party? Best we get to the umbrella and thermometer...

This was one of the high spots in the program for me. Apparently the party with the umbrella and thermometer was one of the reasons why the Professor took up Physics. I say party, well more like a cause for celebration.... The story behind the Umbrella? Well back at the turn of the 19th Century a chap called William Herschel  discovered that if you placed a blackened thermometer beyond the red bit of the spectrum seen through a prism, the thermometer temperature went up. A slightly different form of this experiment was to put a blackened water container in direct sunlight. This needed to be done only after it had been allowed to reach the same temperature as the surroundings by keeping it shielded from direct sunlight behind an umbrella. Remove the umbrella and measure the increase in temperature of the water from the Sun’s light which is falling on the tin can. It is possible to judge the total amount of heat energy falling on the container. When this is combined with the size of the container, it’s possible to easily calculate the energy the sun produces per square meter. If we know how far we are from the Sun, then that square meter is just one very small postage stamp on a very large sphere centred on the Sun. A simple calculation of the surface area of that sphere gives us the total energy output from the Sun. So with every day articles such as umbrella, thermometer and blackened tin can we can accurately calculate the unimaginable amount of energy the sun radiates every second. This has to be cool, or hot if you are in the Sun.

Back to the programme: really, overall, for me there were too many of the ‘unimaginable numbers’. Furthermore we were treated to 18th century physics and determinism as if it were received doctrine today. There is a journalistic axiom: never let the truth get in the way of a good story. It was very disappointing to me that principles were stated as current fact, rather than in their historical perspective. There was no way we were blinded by the focus of the programme. Even if the focus was the magnificent Sun. There were however, some lovely touches. One was the Indian children scurrying off with the Professors’ very nice photos of eclipses; Jovian views of an eclipse, Martian views of an eclipse and lunar eclipses. Let’s hope for more of these cute observations in the next episodes. May be I should have just watched the spectacles: there were oh so many. Maybe I should have just gone wow with this wizard of science. Maybe I’m being uncharitable. In many ways it was a good programme. Let’s hope it stimulates some fledgling Brian Coxes to take that flight into the wonders of the known and unknown Universe.

Let’s hope for more humour and illumination when the Prof looks at the other parts of the solar system. Parts which don’t need any dark glasses to view safely.

Wonders of the solar System series on the BBC


Prof Brian Cox tweet