University of Leicester Open Journals
Not a member yet
2521 research outputs found
Sort by
A1_5 Nightclub energy
Get PDF In this paper we have examined how much heat all the students who attend the weekly student night would generate. We have calculated the maximum energy generated to be 4.19 x 109 Joules. The various ways that this energy could be converted into something more useful have been considered. The assumed usable energy is 1.257 x 109J which would be sufficient to power the electrical systems at ’Let’s Disko’ with the excess contributing to the reduction of heating costs
P2_12 A No Brainer
Get PDFThe aim of this paper is to discuss the feasibility behind the idea of a brain in a vat. This will be achieved by finding the size and cost of a structure that could be used to replace the Corpus Callosum. This is found to be 1.722m^3 with a cost ≈£14.6bn. Finally, other physical limitations to this idea are discussed
P3_2Pumpkin Power
Get PDFWe found that if every person on Earth lit a pumpkin with a tealight on halloween, 76730 tonnes of carbon dioxide would be released which is 0.023 percent of the average carbon dioxide emission of the UK in 2019. Each pumpkin produces 40.61 Watts of power if completely burnt which would be 312 billion Watts for all of the pumpkins. This is enough power to send a rocket to space, which requires 12 billion Watt
A6_8 When The Enterprise Fell To Earth
Get PDFIn the 2013 film Star Trek: Into Darkness, the titular vessel, U.S.S. Enterprise, is seen to accelerate towards the Earth from orbit, with its imminent crash on the surface of the Earth stopped by the firing of RCS Thrusters at the cloud layer of the atmosphere. Here we estimate the forces and deceleration experienced by the crew of the Enterprise when the ship is prevented from crashing on the surface of the Earth, and assess whether the stunt would have killed the crew or not. We find that the required force applied over the observed thruster burn time in the film to bring the Enterprise to a constant altitude is ∼ 1.08x1012N, which is equivalent to ∼ 31,400 Saturn V Rockets. The deceleration required is approximately 730ms−2 , which is equal to ∼ 75 Gs, and would have most likely have killed the crew
A2 6 Conditions for Air to Cast a Shadow
Get PDFAir is transparent and does not absorb or reflect much light, hence it is improbable to have a shadow. In this article, we determine the conditions under which air can have a visible shadow comparable to the shadow of glass. This is done with refraction, by changing air's refractive index to that of glass, n=1.5. At a temperature of 0^oC, the air pressure needed to cast this shadow was found to be 1.57x10^8 Pa, analogous to the pressure used in high-pressure hydraulic hoses [5]. These are thought to be reasonable conditions to see the shadow of air
P6_5 Interstellar Space Pirates
Get PDFThe authors present in the following paper an analysis of the use of a solar sail on a typical pirate ship, and how long it would take to reach our nearest interstellar neighbour, Proxima Centauri. Using a ship with mass 1.270 × 10^5 kg, and a total sail surface area of 385.0 m2 , it was found that from an initial velocity of 0.000 ms−1 , the journey would take 8.422 × 10^14 s or approximately 26.71 million years, and the ship would arrive travelling at a velocity of 95.49 ms−1 . Also considered was the case where the ship started with an initial velocity equal to Earth’s orbital velocity v = vtang = 2.798 × 10^4 ms−1 . The journey would take 1.350 × 10^12 s or approximately 42,000 years. The final velocity would be equal to the initial velocity to 4 significant figures
P2_1 A PREMium Model
Get PDFThis paper verifies that the radial density equations outlined in the Preliminary Reference Earth Model (PREM) are accurate by using them to calculate a value of 5.9728×10(24) kg for the mass of the Earth. This was found to be only 0.007% different from the known value of the Earth’s mass
The Trans-Border Arrangement of Ming Pilgrim Flasks and the Narrative of Transculturation in the British Museum
Get PDFThis article revolves around the concepts of trans-border arrangement and transculturation and their significance to a critical theme in the British Museum today: cultural connectivity. Trans-border arrangement refers to displaying and classifying an object in museum space based on the object’s context of production as well as its relations with other objects and people; its transfer, gifting, collection, consumption, and appropriation. It represents, in museum space today, the circulation of material objects across cultural-geographical boundaries over a period of time in the past. To illustrate a trans-border arrangement, this article provides an empirical investigation of the multiple placements of Ming pilgrim flasks in the British Museum’s galleries of China, India, and Europe. This display scheme not only shows how the British Museum can accommodate the narrative of transculturation into its spatial configuration, but also how the institution of the museum can engage in the global turn in art history that blossomed in the late 1990s
Radical Intangibles: Materializing the Ephemeral
Get PDFNew materialism considers that the world and its histories are produced by a range of material forces that extend from the physical and the biological to the psychological, social and cultural. In recognizing that heritage is not held in objects alone, new materialism discourses echo definitions of intangible cultural heritage (ICH) enshrined in the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. While museums understand the weight of responsibility when engaging with communities of practice, many still restrict the representation of archived ICH material to oral histories, object biographies, video and audio recordings of songs and performing arts. The technical complexities of archiving the ‘live’ perpetuate nineteenth-century museum display conventions, such as fixed-point perspectives and linear approaches to representation. To address this gap, we introduce ‘computational museology’, which brings a systems thinking approach to 'whole of environment' encoding. Such a framework unites, for instance, artificial intelligence with data curation, and ontology with visualization, as well as embodied participation through immersive and interactive interfaces. The implications of such a framework has yet to be fully theorized but it is evident that a new paradigm of materiality comprising ‘radical intangibles’ is taking shape in museums, which signals a break with both Western historiographic orthodoxies and hypothetical paradigms of tangible and intangible heritage. This article foregrounds the emergence of radical intangibles as crucial new digital materialities that are transforming reenacted and embodied practices, which we demonstrate in the discussion of two longitudinal curatorial projects based in China and Hong Kong: the first, 'Hong Kong Martial Arts Living Archive' (HKMALA) in collaboration with the International Goushou Association in Hong Kong, and the second, ‘Remaking Confucian Rites’ (RCR), undertaken in conjunction with Tsinghua University in Beijing. Both of these projects are significant for having taken up ‘technologies of corporeality’ – digital paradigms at the forefront of computer graphics, spatial and temporal modelling, and virtual reality. The powerful tools being developed across the two instances have begun to revolutionize ICH as a practice, a mode of transmission, and an object of study
An Actor-Network Perspective on Collections Documentation and Data Practices at Museums
Get PDFThe improvement of digital technology over recent decades has advanced the ability of museums to manage records of their collections and share them online. However, despite the rise of research in the area of digital heritage, less attention has been given to a sociotechnical perspective on such technology. Drawing upon concepts from Actor-Network Theory, this paper presents actors associated with the V&A’s collections management system and its online catalogue. Digital design objects, the museum’s new type of collection, are seen as a driving force for change in collections documentation practices. This paper argues for models of documentation to change from closed to open and participatory in order to (re)present such objects’ materiality in collection records through the voices of multiple actors. This paper, highlighting the agency of data and technology, increases our awareness of the potential consequences of museums’ data practices where the integration of advanced technology (e.g., AI) will be implemented in the future