Whats your University/City's Claim to Fame

[ed84c]

NORTHWICH

 

Birth place of; (and no we dont have a University)

 

Swing Bridges

 

Polythene

 

Boat Lifts

 

ONLY producer of Soda Ash in the country

 

Civil War ended there

 

ICI/ Brunner Mond

 

Nodding Donkeys

 

Brine Pumping

 

 

Therefore meaning Northwich is better than the towns posted up to yet

 

All that with a small town of only a few thou people.

 

There are only about 3 of us that appreciate this though

 

Anybody been to Northwich?

[JohnB]

Queensland Institute of Technology made and flew the world's first working SCRAM Jet. Beat NASA by about a year.

 

I never went to QUT, but I'm proud of the achievment.

[AL]

University of California, Berkeley. Among other things, Cal named several of the latter "unnatural" elements of the periodic table, including berkelium, (for Berkeley of course), californium (for University of California) and lawrencium (named for Edward Lawrence, former professor at Cal and inventor of the cyclotron).

 

Also, geologist Walter Alvarez, who came up with the theory that the dinosaurs were wiped out by an asteroid after discovering the iridium layer in the KT-boundary of the fossil record is a Cal professor. I actually met the man while I was an undergrad, but he seemed less interested in talking about his achievements and more excited about telling us how a close friend of his tried out to be a contestant on that TV show Survivor, and how he was thinking of doing the same. As a geologist, he's probably got the field experience necessary to win.

[Severian]

University of Glasgow:

 

William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, returned at the age of 22 to the University where he had studied and took up the chair of Natural Philosophy (Physics), a post he held for 53 years. Arguably the pre-eminent scientist of the nineteenth century, he enjoyed an international reputation for theoretical and practical research across virtually the entire range of the physical sciences.

 

Adam Smith, economist, philosopher and author of The Wealth of Nations, was only 14 when he started as a student at Glasgow. In 1751 he returned as Professor of Logic, transferring to the Chair of Moral Philosophy shortly afterwards.

 

Joseph Black taught both chemistry and medicine in the eighteenth century and introduced a modern understanding of gases.

 

John Logie Baird, one of television's pioneers, was attending the University when the First World War intervened.

 

James Watt conducted some of his early experiments with steam power while working at the University.

 

William Macquorn Rankine, pioneer of modern thermodynamics, wrote the first authoritative textbooks on engineering.

 

 

 

Nobel laureates:

 

alumnus Sir William Ramsay received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1904 for his discovery of inert gases which established a new group in the periodic table.

 

Frederick Soddy lectured at the University in the early 1920s. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1921 for his work on the origin and nature of isotopes.

 

graduate John Boyd Orr campaigned for an adequate diet for the people, starting during the First World War; his food plan produced a better nourished population than ever before. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1949 for his work with the United Nations.

 

graduate Sir Alexander Robertus Todd received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1957. His research led directly to the understanding of nucleic acids.

 

Sir Derek Barton, Regius Professor of Chemistry in the mid-1950s, received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1969 for his work on conformational analysis.

 

Sir James Black, who worked at the University's Veterinary School during the 1950s, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1988 for discoveries of important principles for drug treatments.

[Severian]

Queensland Institute of Technology made and flew the world's first working SCRAM Jet. Beat NASA by about a year.

 

I never went to QUT' date=' but I'm proud of the achievment.[/quote']

 

It is a real shame they don't abbreviate that as QUIT.

 

Almost as good as the Scottish Highlands Institute of Technology....

[Bettina]

Kentucky....We have all the gold

[JohnB]

Severian, we almost went for the "Seven Hills Institute of Technology" instead.

 

The real crappy think with the Scram jet is that it was a major breakthrough with almost unbelievable benefits for Australia, (Commercial applications) yet when the researchers asked for a mere A$25 million over 5 years they were told to "put in an application and we'll consider it" by the gov.

 

Are politicians especially bred from the shallow end of the gene pool or just generally stupid?

[ecoli]

They're blind if they don't see immediate financial rewards.

 

edit: Or maybe they do see immediate financial rewards...And they're being persuaded by airlines and oil companies to bag the project, because they don't want new technologies taking them over.

[JohnB]

There is a side to that technology that rarely if ever gets mention. It's always "Brisbane to London in 2 hours, won't that be great?" What seems to be constantly ignored is the fact that on the day that happens, every fighter jet and most air to air missiles become obsolete.

 

There will need to be a completely new generation of combat aircraft and weapons systems. Someone's going to make a packet.

[atinymonkey]

Hmmm. If a jet fighter travels at more than mach 5 the human pilot inside of it becomes a dead human pilot. The limits of fighter technology are the human passenger, not the airplane, and modern fighters are designed around the limits of human endurance.

[Verusamore]

Agree with JohnB ,

QUT is the moving rock ology of tech ( in australia ).

 

another conspiracy theory ; the use of SCRAMJET technology is another reason to pursue oil in other countries .

 

There will need to be a completely new generation of combat aircraft and weapons systems. Someone's going to make a packet.

 

Yeah it's called SPAM or Self Propelled Automated Missile .

[ed84c]

Hmmm. If a jet fighter travels at more than mach 5 the human pilot inside of it becomes a dead human pilot. The limits of fighter technology are the human passenger, not the airplane, and modern fighters are designed around the limits of human endurance.

 

Surely that is only based on accelearatoin though?

[bloodhound]

Hmmm. If a jet fighter travels at more than mach 5 the human pilot inside of it becomes a dead human pilot. The limits of fighter technology are the human passenger, not the airplane, and modern fighters are designed around the limits of human endurance.

isnt that a bit wrong? i mean if the acceleration to 5 mach is slow enough. i am sure the pilot will survive. and as long as he doesnt pull any manuevers (ie just travel in a straight line) he should be alrite.

 

I mean we on earth DO travel quite fast.

[Verusamore]

err isn't there a possibility of non-human pilots ?

 

btw curious how fast would the plane go in space if given the same acceleration on Earth ?

 

Would it make a difference .

[JaKiri]

isnt that a bit wrong? i mean if the acceleration to 5 mach is slow enough. i am sure the pilot will survive. and as long as he doesnt pull any manuevers (ie just travel in a straight line) he should be alrite.

 

Except fighter jets aren't designed to travel in long, straight lines. They have to manouver by necessity.

[CPL.Luke]

consider this however,

 

do you think its possible to open a bomb bay at mach 5

I think not. doing so would tare the plane apart (at least to my limited knowledge of supersonic flight)

[coquina]

Just because a plane can go MACH 5 doesn't mean it has to do it continuously - get there fast, slow down, drop the bomb, close the door, and SCRAM.

[Rasori]

Plus, if you start at high altitude and go into a dive, it can throw off the airflow enough that you could open the doors.