Ted Nield hails another spectacular failure of those in charge to recognise that 'science' is part of 'culture'.
Geoscientist 22.06 July 2012
As the 70-day, 8000-mile Torch Relay brings the Olympic flame within reach of 95% of UK residents in the hands of ‘inspirational people’, there can be no doubt that the most exciting thing going on in the capital this month is - the
Crossrail Project, subject of our main feature, by engineering geologist Ursula Lawrence.
But touching the other subject (incidentally,
Geoscientistcovered the engineering geology of the Olympic Park in May 2006, and do watch out for Sarah Day’s special London podcasts while the flame still burns) we witnessed the arrival of said
ignis fatuus on May 18. Since then there has been much complaint (at conferences of science communicators) that the so-called ‘Cultural Olympiad’, a set of nebulous parallel events featuring ‘guys on stilts’, ought to have been named the ‘Arts Olympiad’. And one opportunity to include some science was well and truly lost on that day, as the apparatus in which the flame was carried to Land’s End (before being transferred to the famous torch) was described by BBC World’s commentator as “a specially designed golden lantern”.
Why the helicopter in which it arrived was not described as “a specially designed heavier-than-air flying machine” I cannot imagine; but I suspect it was because the commentator knew a helicopter when she saw one, but had never seen a Davy Lamp in her life.
Now, I recognise that not everyone comes from a mining background or was brought up in a coal basin. But Humphry Davy’s Safety Lamp surely ranks among the greatest inventions of all time –its metal gauze principle given to the world freely by an inventor too high-minded to apply for a patent. Ignorance of it may say something about the decline of mining, or changes in the way chemistry and physics are taught; but it rankles all the more around these parts, because Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829) was one of the 13 founders of - The Geological Society.
I was in France in 1998, when the French national stadium, the Stade de France, was opened. It was built on heavily polluted brownfield land in Saint-Denis, Paris - and I greatly admired the way that a TV science programme for children,
C’est pas sorcier (‘It’s not magic’ – FR3), devoted an entire programme to its planning and design, land remediation, and construction.
And that, in a nutshell, is how enthusiasm for the Olympics could have been used to feed interest in the amazing geotechnical and other scientific aspects of this worldwide sporting event. But nobody thought to ask. And we have got guys on stilts instead.