Friday 29 November 2013

The wrong kind of impact


If you are not a UK academic you have probably missed this, but today was the deadline for submission to an exercise gloriously called Research Excellence Framework 2014. Basically, a beauty contest for UK universities where we already know the winners. Still important because it determines how research money is shared among the losers. For the last two years or so I have had the "pleasure" of coordinating one of these submissions. It has involved numerous internal benchmark exercises, external reviews, a lot la-di-da meetings and, most exciting of all, a set of Impact Case Studies. There are supposed to show how awfully important our research is for the rest of society and how we are helping to fix the economy (after the bankers broke it). 

As a bit of light relief, I have written a short story on impact. Some of you might be entertained by it, so I decided to share it. The idea was to ask how the character from my children's books, Prof Kompressor, would react if asked to provide evidence of impact. This is for everyone out there that had to engage with REF2014 and all those that are dreading something similar coming your way. 

Enjoy!


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The wrong kind of impact

It was the most peculiar letter. He had to read it several times to make sense of it. His old mentor from college, Professor B.R. Ainsworth, was asking for help. Apparently it was a matter of impact or, more precisely, the lack of it.
“Dear Professor,” the letter started.
“I am sorry to bother you but we really could do with some assistance. The Government has decided that it is time to measure the usefulness of our research and we need to demonstrate that our work has impact on the world outside the laboratory. As you will appreciate, this is not so easy seeing as we are exploring the fundamental nature of space and time. Anyway, I know you have used some of our ideas for your inventions and I was rather hoping you might be able to help us by providing a useful Impact Case Study.”
“Impact what study?” reacted the Professor.
The more he thought about it, the clearer it became that his friend and his team of brainy scientists were in real trouble. There is not much money to be made from black holes, and wonky time does not help solve many real life problems either. He would like to help, but what could he possibly do?
As he tried to figure this out, the Professor made himself a nice cup of tea. Three lumps of sugar and a splash of milk, as usual. He brought the drink into the inventing studio to refresh his memory. Where had he actually used Professor Ainsworth’s ideas?
The first thing that came to mind was the time when he tweaked gravity to make a black hole into a bin. He shuddered as he remembered the chaos as the black hole ended up extremely hot and the house almost melted. This was some kind of impact, but obviously not the right kind. Besides, this invention was quite temperamental so it was probably best to keep it secret.
He had used Professor Ainsworth’s idea of a multiverse when he tried to solve the problem of global warming by tapping into a colder Earth in a parallel universe. If this had worked as intended it might have had exactly the kind of impact the scientists were looking for. Unfortunately, the plan had backfired and all he had ended up with was frostbite. The wrong kind of impact entirely.
Then there was the design of the flying car, where he had used efficient batteries based on Professor Ainsworth’s work on supracapacitors.
“That’s more like it,” decided the Professor, rubbing a bump on his head that was left as a reminder of the first test flight.
At least this invention worked.
He could not claim to have made any money on it, though. Mainly because he had kept the blueprints to himself. It worried him that flying cars might wreak havoc in the skies. People seemed to have trouble staying safe on the roads so what would happen if they could choose to go up and down as well? It might lead to the kind of impact he would rather not think about.
The Professor could not help smiling as he recalled the wintery night when his flying invention had proved its worth. Surely, helping Father Christmas when his sled had broken down, making sure that children all around the world got their presents, would have to count as impact on the real world?
“The only problem is,” he frowned, “it might be a bit tricky to provide convincing evidence.”
“I guess I could try to get a supporting letter from the North Pole...”
The Professor admitted defeat with a heavy sigh. He was an excellent inventor, and his inventions were often excellent, but they all seemed to have the wrong kind of impact.

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Two of the ideas, fixing global warming and the black-hole bin, come from Professor Kompressor goes environ-mental, which just happens to be free from Amazon this weekend:

The flying car was invented and used to save Christmas in the first book, Professor Kompressor, which also happens to be free but this time from ibooks:

Tuesday 26 November 2013

An issue of transparency


“It’s such a shame,” thought the Professor. “Such a shame that there is a wall in the way.”
He was sitting in his comfortable reading chair with a book on his lap, trying to make sense of a particularly challenging passage. The shadows were getting longer in the room, but outside the afternoon sun was still shining.
Unfortunately, the Professor’s reading chair was facing the fireplace not the window. So he could not enjoy the fact that the weather was nice. It really was a great shame.
Returning to his reading, the Professor started at the top of the page for the umpteenth time. He made it to the bottom, but could still not get to the bottom of it. The book made no sense to him at all.
“All these complicated words,” he complained. “Can’t help feeling that they’re messing up the message.”
“Have to get through somehow. I just wish it could have been more transparent.”
“That’s actually not a bad idea,” he thought, in a moment of unexpected inspiration.
“If I could make the walls transparent, then it wouldn’t matter that there is no window. I would be able to look straight out into the garden. And enjoy the afternoon sun.”
“Even when I’m stuck here not understanding this infernal book.”
He went off to the inventing studio to try to figure out how to make a wall see-through. He did not really know how to get started, so he decided to poke around a bit. He started by checking out various bits of unfinished inventions, trying to figure out what, if anything, they were good for.
The idea came to him when he was moving an old TV screen out of the way. He started thinking about how amazing it was that live images could be displayed on a flat screen like that. All because of funny fluid crystals that reacted to electric currents in a special way.
“What if... you could make the bricks in the house act in the same way?”
“Suppose you could make brick that become transparent when you run a weak electric current through them. Then you could make the walls disappear whenever you want to.”
“It would be like being outside and inside at the same time.”
It was a beautiful idea, but not one easily made into reality.
It took the Professor a lot of hard work and some serious thinking, but a couple of weeks later he was done. The house had been completely rewired and the invention was ready to be tested.
He flicked the switch on the wall, which faded from view until it was gone completely. At least he could not see it anymore.
He was looking out at the back garden. It was a grey day. Clouds were gathering and it seemed likely that it was going to rain. It looked cold and miserable. The Professor shivered. It might have been wise to test the invention when the sun was out, but it was too late now. He decided to have a bath to warm up.
As he was soaking his body in the hot bath, it started raining. He could hear raindrops tip-tip-tapping on the roof. The rhythm was soothing and he started feeling sleepy. Just as he was about to doze off something happened.
The rain short-circuited the new invention. The see-through walls became temperamental. All of a sudden, the bathroom walls disappeared.
One moment, the Professor was relaxing in a nice warm bathroom. The next moment, he was still in the bathtub but it now appeared to be outdoors.
This was not just impractical. It was embarrassing. The Professor could not reach his towel, and he did not want to get out of the bath completely naked, in full view of the world outside. What would the neighbours think?
He had no choice. He had to stay in the bath until the temperamental walls decided to switch back again.
This did not happen.
The water in the bath got cold. The Professor was freezing, but modesty forced him to stay where he was. It was getting dark outside, but as he had thoughtlessly switched the light on in the bathroom this made the situation even worse.
Eventually, well after midnight, he made his move. He managed to get his frozen limbs out of the bath, wrapped himself in a towel and went straight to bed. He needed three extra blankets to get warm again.
As for the walls, they eventually had enough of being see-through and returned to normal. This was just as well, really, because there is quite a lot going on in a house that you would rather not see.

This story was written for the book launch of Professor Kompressor under cover, about a month ago. It's kind of inspired by liquid crystals. Hope you enjoy it!