Help Light a Spark!

“Enterprise means much more than just the ability to become an entrepreneur.  It is that quality that gives an individual a positive outlook, an ability to see the glass as half full rather than half empty, and is a valuable attribute for the whole of life.  It is a quality many bring with them on starting primary school but far too many leave secondary school without.”

Lord Young, Enterprise for All  (June 2014)

 

A new Government initiative to support schools by recruiting business volunteers to help with their enterprise and careers activities is currently being piloted around the country.   The Government have set up the Careers and Enterprise Company (www.careersandenterprise.co.uk) and asked Local Enterprise Partnerships to deliver on this project.  Enterprise M3 (www.enterprisem3.org.uk) covers the M3 corridor.

 

After a tendering exercise, SATRO (in partnership with the Basingstoke Consortium) have secured the contract from Enterprise M3.  In line with the initiative, SATRO have appointed an Enterprise Coordinator whose job it  will be to recruit volunteers from all areas of business. Those volunteers will aim to inspire and help young people, when they are looking at their futures.

 

SATRO are in the process of meeting with schools in Farnham and Waverley to see what they are currently doing and what they need help with - seeing where the gaps are if you like.  The feedback so far has been very positive.

 

The next piece in the jigsaw is to recruit those volunteers from local businesses - Enterprise Advisors (EAs) - to help support the schools' careers and enterprise activities, and that is what we are asking you to consider doing.

 

The model is for one EA to be linked to one school. He or she would be able to draw upon their local connections (and new ones made through the network) to help support individual schools’ specific needs. They would be supported by the Enterprise Coordinators: not just initially, but throughout.

 

What would it involve?  Well, that very much depends upon what would best help the individual schools.

 

Evidence shows that this kind of employer/business engagement produces positive outcomes not only for the young people involved, but also for the local economy. The benefits for business include: the opportunity to make new business contacts; positive local publicity; opportunities for their workforce to learn new skills by engaging with the schools; creating a motivated and able pool from which to recruit employees and meeting their social responsibility targets. 

 

Some of us were lucky enough when we were in school to encounter a person who somehow lit a spark and set us thinking about what we would like to do with our lives, we all remember them. So, if you think that you could help inspire young minds… help light a spark… and would like to know more, please email mo@satro.org.uk . 

 

 

James Lovelock by guest blogger John Faulkner

Hiking with his father on Leith Hill, young James Lovelock would admire the view across to the South Downs. Years later, in the 1960s, the view did not seem as clear. There was a haze. Was it man made? Where did it come from? The answer would introduce a precision instrument for measuring air pollution, both help to start the environmental movement and avert a catastrophe.

Inspired by visits to the Science Museum, impoverished James Lovelock self funded his ambition to become a scientist. Frustrated with university authority he did his science independently as a 'maverick'. Among his discoveries and inventions is the Electron Capture Detector (ECD).  This is an instrument so sensitive it can detect airborne particles in parts per trillion (1 in 1000,000,000,000). The ECD works by ionising a gas then passing an electrical current through it. Specific atoms or molecules introduced to the gas can be identified by changes in the current.

He used his ECD on the North Downs air. Testing for man made chlorofluorocarbons (CFC), used for aerosols and refrigerants, he discovered them in the wind from London. Was CFC dispersal wider? He part funded joining British research ship Shackleton on it's 1972 Antarctic voyage. His resulting paper and lectures on global dispersal alerted other scientists. Alarmingly they found CFC action was destroying the earth's ozone layer. Ozone protects life from the harmful effects of the sun's Ultra Violet radiation. In 1987 the Montreal Protocol, to control CFCs, was agreed by 197 UN countries and is the first worldwide agreement to protect the Earth's environment.

After a distinguished science career, at 96, James Lovelock now writes on the environment. He is most famous for the Gaia hypothesis developed while consulting NASA on how landers might test for the presence of life on Mars. Gaia proposes the Earth's environment is self regulating, where life maintains the balance of nature. Living processes, for example, coordinate to maintain the air's oxygen level at 21%, the exact proportion in air needed by our biosphere to survive.

Recognising Science Museum influences, in 2015, he donated his fascinating and important archive to it. It includes the ECD, built in his garden shed laboratory! See the link below...

http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/visitmuseum/Plan_your_visit/exhibitions/lovelock.aspx

There are many anecdotes from him and one that impresses me is his response during the war to using shaved rabbits to categorise degrees of skin burn. He refused to harm innocent animals and successfully conducted the tests on himself which he described as 'exquisitely painful'!

- John Faulkner, SATRO Volunteer

SATRO ATTENDING UNUM REPORT LAUNCH AT HOUSE OF COMMONS

Unum are hosting a reception at the House of Commons to launch their report ‘ Making a Difference in Our Communities’ which highlights their extensive Corporate Social Responsibility programme. SATRO members of staff Jules Hall and Dr Beccy Bowden will be attending.  Unum say ‘we believe that helping our communities is a natural extension of the commitment we make each and every day to our customer. The launch of this report is the perfect opportunity to celebrate the charities, educators, voluntary organisations, sportspeople and performers who have inspired us locally and nationally’. Unum sponsor the SATRO Maths Challenge and also a mentoring programme at Therfield School which they support with many volunteers. Beccy Bowden said ‘Unum is an absolute pleasure for a small charity like us to work with because they care about what we do as much as we care – and that means that together we can achieve fantastic things!’

John Faulkner, SATRO Volunteer on Paul Dirac, Theoretical Physicist

Ask any physicist today about who they rate as next best British scientist to Newton and the answer might easily be Paul Dirac. Dirac was a theoretical physicist and in 1928 he derived the 'Dirac Equation'. His genius was to construct a single equation that described electron behaviour in all conditions - from the weird world of quantum mechanics to the light speeds of Einstein's special theory of relativity. Put simply the behaviour of every electron that had ever existed in the universe! The power of the equation went further and predicted the existence of a new unsuspected type of matter called antimatter. At the age of 31 Dirac shared the 1933 Nobel Prize for physics. The first anti-matter to be discovered was the anti-electron, or positron, in 1934. Our modern world of electronic wonders would not exist without reference to this one glorious piece of mathematical genius. Knowledge of the positron has enabled the invention of latest non-invasive medical scanners. The Dirac Equation is described in his ground breaking book The Principles of Quantum Mechanics.

Dirac was born in Bristol in 1902 and died in Florida in 1984. As a formidable contributor to quantum theory and one of the world's most respected scientists he held a glittering array of awards and professorships in Britain and the USA. Although happily married he was cripplingly quiet and shy, possibly suffering from autism. This may explain why he is not well known outside the world of physics.

His memorial can be found in a corner of Westminster Abbey - the Dirac Equation carved in stone.