August - Worldcon in Dublin and Calculating River Flow

I've just spent a week and a half helping to staff Worldcon, the World Science Fiction Convention. This was held in Dublin for the first time and all hands were needed. My husband Allan also attended and gave me great assistance. The Hugo Awards were carefully administered, and duly awarded in a stunning ceremony.

The atmosphere of excitement, friendship, teamwork and optimism became an absolute credit to the main event organisers. I don't know when I've enjoyed myself more. I learned an enormous amount every day and all this will be enriching my written work in due course. The Worldcon torch has been passed to New Zealand.

Being a nature lover and environmentalist can be mentally, physically and emotionally draining these days. When you feel you have drawn the last drops of optimism and faith from the well, I recommend getting involved in some activity like Worldcon or another non-profit group. This replenishes not just the bucket but the well. The awesome accomplishment of a team - quite often composed of strangers - shows the power of what humans can also achieve to protect nature. And you will make friends.

I am still catching up with life after the Con and preparing to head back to the new college year. So instead of a longer account I’m going to provide something useful. This can be taught with students, schoolkids, Guides and Scouts or just as a family team.

During my Ecology course I measured state of flow of a small river, the Nanekin. Here are the figures which we gained by timing an orange as it bobbed down the river for (a previously measured) 10 metres.

The times recorded over ten metres were as follows:
1) 11.78 seconds
2) 13.06 seconds
3) 11.85 seconds
4) 11.72 seconds
5) 13.06 seconds
The trips which took less than twelve seconds were when the orange was near the left bank, looking upstream, or in the centre. The two trips over thirteen seconds were when the orange floated near the right bank. This demonstrated to us that different rates of flow were occurring in different parts of even a small river.

In order to average the times I have added them up and divided by five.
11.78 + 13.06 + 11.85 + 11.72 + 13.06 = 61.47
61.47 divided by five = 12.294 per ten meters per second. This is the surface velocity of the river.
Multiplied by 0.8 = 9.8352 per ten metres per second. This is the velocity of the whole river body.
Divided by ten = 0.98 metres per second.

Berg’s Classification of River Flow:
State of flow
Velocity

Torrential: Over 1m per second.
Fast: 0.5m – 1m per second
Moderate: 0.25m – 0.5m per second
Slow: Under 0.25m per second.

According to the scale, the Nanekin was ‘Fast’ even during this dry period of winter with a velocity of 0.98m per sec. A good comparison would be to time the flow at different seasons.
Children should be reminded that stream water is likely not safe to drink. While in the vicinity, why not spot water birds and plants, fishes and invertebrates? Rivers can be highly entertaining.

To celebrate the great time we had at Dublin2019, I am making Murder At Dublin Mensa free to download. Grab it 7 – 9 September.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Murder-Dubli...

https://amazon.com/Murder-Dublin-Mens...

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Watch my book trailers for my science fiction series:
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