Today I attended the first annual celebration meeting for the North East Institute of Technology (NEIOT) at New College Durham, the first in-person I have been to in over a year! The IOTs are collaborations between local FE colleges, Universities and Industry employers aimed at training the technical support that will be needed in the coming years. In the North East we are focussing on advanced manufacturing, construction and digital skills.

An explanation of IOTs can be found at https://youtu.be/Mis2YMNJvos

Looking east out over the North Sea at Whitley Bay where I live on the afternoon of Monday 30th November 2020 I saw the following:

It was fascinating to see how bright it is within the primary rainbow and how this illuminates the sea at its end.

The primary rainbow forms from refraction and a single reflection inside the raindrops.In large drops (>1mm) red, green and violet are brightest but this is not the case here so I think we are looking at half millimetre or greater sized drops.

The secondary rainbow involves two reflections in the raindrops and is separated by about 10 degrees from the first, about five times the angular separation between red and violet in the primary rainbow.

Last night I attended the regional dinner for Fellows of the Royal Academy of Engineering hosted by the Materials Processing Institute (MPI –  https://www.mpiuk.com/). The dinner was held in the boardroom of the Cleveland Institution of Engineers (https://www.iom3.org/cleveland-institution-engineers)  which is one of the oldest engineering institutions in the world and is affiliated to The Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3). An excellent meal with plenty of stimulation discussion on topics from decarbonisation to industrial strategy.

Just got back from a day at Surrey University lecturing on the Ceramics and Ceramic Coatings Module in the Advanced Materials MSc programme. I gave an hour on mechanical and wear test methods and an hour on interfaces and adhesion of coatings.

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