Bertha Benz by Guest Blogger John Faulkner

German engineer Carl Benz patented the first petrol engine motor car 130 years ago. The person who made the motor car a commercial reality and initiated the industry was his fiancé, and later wife, Bertha Benz. Although unseemly for women at the time, Bertha had great interest in Science and Engineering. 

Carl owned an almost bankrupt ironworks in Mannheim. He had little business sense but was a talented engineer. He had the idea for the design and construction of a 'horseless carriage' driven by a petrol engine. His fiancé, Bertha, with unshakable belief in him used her inherited wealth to provide the funds to save his business. They married and together, through very hard times and disappointments, they built the first motor car, patened on 29 January 1886. 

Carl drove the newly completed car around their town. The vehicle worried the local people who petitioned the Kaiser to ban it. The car was confirmed to the ironworks as a curiosity - by orders of the authorities and under police guard! 

Following all their hard work, Bertha just could not accept this and her determined actions changed the world... 

Stealing the very car she had helped to build, and with two of her children to push it up the hills, she drove to her mother's home 100km away in Pforzheim. 

Bertha had to make running repairs. One to unblock a pipe with her hatpin and another to make improvements to the failing wooden brake blocks by replacing them with leather pads. The catastrophe of a broken drive chain did not stop her and she found a blacksmith to make the repair. 

The car used cleaning fluid as fuel, better known to us today as petrol and she stopped at pharmacies on her way to top up. At one pharmacy in Wieslock, she bought the entire stock to the confusion of the chemist. This pharmacy later became the worlds first petrol filling station! 

Finally, Bertha made it to her mother's house only to find her out visiting a cousin! She sent a telegram to Carl to explain where she was with the children and a few days later made the return journey. By now, the horseless carriage had caused such a stir, people lined the route to see the astonishing machine with the driver and her passengers. 

Bertha made a detailed report on the drive which lead to further technical improvements such as extra gearing and better brakes, proving the importance of rigorous test drives to verify designs. She established many firsts and ideas on her drive: brake pads, petrol filling stations, car mechanic workshops and the concept of the autobahn.

Her clever publicity raised public awareness that reliable petrol driven motor vehicles could be manufactured. Orders for the motor cars soon arrived and the automobile industry began with production of the worlds first cars manufactured by the Benz company. 

Famed for her work, Bertha died in 1944 at the age of 95. In 2008, the 194km round trip Bertha Benz Memorial Route was inaugurated to honour her. 

One hundred and thirty years after her awesome drive, it might be interesting to wonder what Bertha would have made of the traffic on the A3 through Guildford at rush hour! 

In 1851, French scientist Leon Foucault (1819 - 1868), with a simple pendulum, finally showed the earth rotated. - by guest blogger John Faulkner

The motto of the Royal Society is - Nullius in Verba (take nobody's word for it).....

Drop an object and it falls toward the ground, the earth seems fixed where it is. The skies, stars moon, planets and sun, move overhead. Aristotle said this proves the earth was the centre of the universe with the heavens revolving around it.

Over time, philosophers suspected the earth might be rotating on its own axis. Copernicus showed that the Earth orbited the sun and his solution to the moving skies was a rotating Earth. Galileo with his telescope saw that Jupiter spun on its own axis, so why not the earth? Newton discovered gravity, which explained, if the earth rotated (at up to 1000mph at the equator) everything did not fly off into space.

But there was no evidence the earth moved and Egyptian philosopher Ptolemy (100AD), had proposed the earth sat within moving crystal spheres that held the skies. Nobody could disprove it.

In 1851 French scientist Leon Foucault (1819 - 1868), with a simple pendulum, finally showed the earth rotated.

Foucault knew that Newtons First Law of motion means a moving object would continue unless another force acted upon it. Setting a pendulum swinging on a wire, enough to resist forces other than gravity, the pendulum would continue in its plane. Foucault hung a 67 meter long 28 kilogram pendulum from the dome of the Pantheon in Paris running North to South. The pendulum gradually appeared to shift direction but since no new forces were acting on it this  must be that the Earth was moving underneath! Foucault worked out that the formula to calculate the degrees of shift as follows....

Degrees shift per day  = 360 multiplied by the sine of the pendulums latitude on the earth.

So...

at the north pole where latitude is 90 degrees (the sine of 90 = 1) the shift is 360 degrees/ day

at the equator where latitude is 0 degrees (the sine of 0 = 0) the shift is 0 degrees/ day

Surrey SATRO office latitude is 51.24 degrees (the sine of 51.24 = 0.8276) the shift is 298 degrees/ day

Foucault went on to develop a better, more convenient instrument to demonstrate this effect - the gyroscope.

Thanks to him the search to find if the earth moved resulted with a device found in many objects that need to know orientation. Here are some examples.... ship stabilisers, aircraft autopilots, non magnetic compasses for navigation, virtual reality headsets, robotics, Segway Scooters....

                                                                                                             - John Faulkner

Extended work placement student Thomas Banks - Student Case Study

My name is Thomas Banks and I currently study A Level Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science and Mathematics (Statistics) at Strode’s College in Egham. I hope to read Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge or Exeter.

I applied for the placement because I wanted to see if I would enjoy a career in science. Another reason is that it is a great experience that will help strengthen my UCAS application.

My placement was to do assessing the biodiversity of different school grounds. I carried out different surveying techniques such as setting up traps and counting and identifying different species. I then looked at the bird and tree data in more detail to see if there was any correlation between the two.


The experience was very enjoyable and helped me to see what it would be like working as a research scientist. It helped me to develop skills in communication and team work, both of which are important in employment.

Extended work placement student Sukant Roy - Student Case Study

My name is Sukant Roy, and I go to the Royal Grammar School, Guildford. I am just about to begin year 13 and will be studying Further maths, Physics and Chemistry as my A level subjects. I want to study Computer science at University level. 

One reason why I applied for a placement is that I wanted to gain understanding and experience of how it feels to carry out academic research in an institute (being supervised by an expert): I kind of got an experience of how a PhD works, and what the environment he/she works in is like. I also have an interest in semiconductor devices and the physics behind them, and I thought a project in these would be very informative and fulfil my interest, at the same time provoking a greater passion for physics. The things I learnt definitely were not of A level standard: they were more first and second Year Undergraduate level.

My project was on modelling different semiconductor devices through simulations and explaining how they work. The devices were diodes, MOSFET’s AND BJT’s. I benefitted hugely from the placement not only because I learnt concepts in programming and Electronics (semiconductors) but also because I developed key skills such as communication, time management, decision-making and data analysis. I got first-hand experience of the workplace environment. This experience was highly rewarding and enriching. 

Extended work placement student Sophie Russell - Student Case Study

SATRO CASE STUDY

I currently study biology, chemistry, maths with mechanics and physics at Esher College. My particular interests are biology and chemistry, especially where they overlap in terms of genetics and chemical processes in the body. I then found that biochemistry was perfect for me, and I intend to study this at university. Post-university I would like to do a PhD or perhaps complete a master’s degree, in order to start out in a career in scientific research and truly gain a deep understanding in a focused area of biochemistry.

I applied for a SATRO placement in order to gain some experience of what it takes to have career in research, and to make sure that it is the path I really want to go down. I think that a month spent in the company of published researchers and doctors is invaluable, and I was especially excited for the potential to help them with their own research during my time there. I was placed in the Cardiology department at St George’s hospital, working alongside the doctors who also do research for the hospital’s attached university. They specialise in sports cardiology; that is, the physiological adaptation of the heart in response to athletic training (‘athlete’s heart’), and whether these adaptations are beneficial or actually harmful to the athlete. Another prominent area of research here is the diagnostic overlap between athletic physiology and disease of the heart, and the detrimental effects of an incorrect diagnosis for an individual. In my time here I have looked into sudden death in athletes taking part in the London Marathon. I have explored whether it is caused by an underlying heart condition, and how that may be differentiated from athlete’s heart on diagnosis, or whether their death was caused by their environment on the day of their event.

I have found that in most cases, it is the former; either inherited conditions that have not presented any symptoms prior to sudden death, or an accumulated disease of the coronary arteries. It is often assumed that the extremely healthy and active lifestyle of an athlete must act as a preventative for heart disease, but this is not always the case. For example, anyone with an inherited predisposition is at risk; their chances can be improved by a healthy diet and exercise, but the risk does not go away.

However, heat stroke was the condition that recurrently affected the most people during the event and was even the cause of one of the fatalities. So I concluded that while underlying disease is most likely to cause sudden death in an athlete, the environment cannot be underestimated in its danger to even the most experienced of marathoners.

From this placement, I have learnt a great deal about working in a small research group. I frequently had to seek advice and help from the other students on this project, and I found that this aided me in working out what was important and what needed changing in my report. Additionally, none of us had much background in sports cardiology, so we initially had to work hard together to understand the subject. I have enjoyed the write up process, trying to adhere to a professional journal article style. I have also learnt that reading and analysis are essential to research and making a balanced conclusion, and that this process is not always easy or fast. However the doctors here have been really patient, taking time out of their days to help us understand what we were looking at and giving great suggestions for project perspectives and focuses.

  - Sophie Russell

Extended work placement student Sharada Joshi - Student Case Study

Name: Sharada Joshi

School: Tiffin girls’ school

Areas of study: Physics, Chemistry, Maths, Further Maths.

Future University, I am applying to: I am planning to apply to the following universities: Cambridge, Imperial and Bath.

Career hopes: Chemical Engineering.

Why I applied for the placement: To experience what experience what engineering would be like at university and to learn something new during my summer vacation!

My Project: My project investigated how inorganic and organic solar cells work and the potential advantages and disadvantages of organic solar cell usage in the future. The code which models the structure of an organic solar cell was also analysed and modified to optimise the I-V characteristics produced in order for the code to be used as an example on the Silvaco website.                                                           

How I benefited from the placement: This experience has taught me to prioritise tasks when planning and also to allow more time for unforeseen circumstances when making an initial plan for a project. I have also learnt that it is not always possible to learn all the theory before doing a practical task, as is often the case at school. However, it was an amazing experience to learn about so many new concepts that build upon the foundations laid at school in such a short amount of time!

Extended work placement student Ross Dobson - Student Case Study

My name is Ross Dobson, and I am studying Maths, Further Maths, Physics, and Economics. I’ve been interested in science for as long as I can remember, and am planning to apply for an Astrophysics degree at university, as I am a fan of astronomy.

I applied for a placement because I wanted to experience working in science to help me see if it was the right career choice for me, and I also wanted to gain some useful transferrable skills – it was also something exciting to do in the summer, not to mention the fact it looks very good on university applications!

My placement involved simulating various types of transistors at the Advanced Technical Institute of the University of Surrey – this was so images could be created of different devices and characteristics, which could then be used in new lecture presentations, videos and materials to improve the quality of the undergraduate student’s learning in Electronic Engineering.

I benefited from the experience as I learnt a lot about working in teams, collaborating on and receiving feedback on ideas, working under deadlines, life in a work environment – and I also made some new friends!

It was a highly enjoyable experience, and I recommend anyone thinking of a STEM degree at university to apply for a placement.

I also benefited from a Bursary which provided me with funding to cover all my costs and travel expenses. Without this, I would not have been able to participate in the placement scheme so I am really grateful for my patrons’ support.