The following is a transcript of the scientist's diairies from the first challenge, arranged scientist-by-scientist.
Go directly to:
Ellen's piece
Hermione's piece
Jonathan's piece
Mike's piece

Ellen:

Talk about stressful.

We went from day one, everything was fine,

learned about how beavers build a dam,

calm, cool collected Jonathan making this water wheel, no problem.

Um...day two, dam is built,

my hands are frozen.

It's absolutely glacial water, never been in so much pain,

but yet so happy because things are working.

We need a still reservoir so the suction in the tube would work.

Beautiful - it comes spraying out on the other end. Right back into the water,

after turning the water wheel, very happy.

Then day three, this is totally Rough Science.

Everything is going well and then you know, half an hour before you're supposed to test it,

everything goes pear-shaped.

Lost pressure in the tube for no apparent reason,

had to restring, pull up the tube, cut off...hoping to find the blockage -

it had to either be a blockage or an air lock...or something.

But that's the time, you can't... you can't...you gotta problem-solve.

You can't figure out exactly what's wrong. With half an hour to go, you just gotta do it.

So we cut off the top of the tube, made sure there was no kinks in it, redid the suction,

and when everything was turned on,

we got electricity.

I don't know what happened but it felt great.

Hermione:

OK, well, I am very relieved to have got through my first Rough Science challenge.

Joining the team has been a great experience.

And to get through the first one and be successful is even better.

It's funny, I've watched the show for a long time,

and so I almost I felt like I knew Mike and Jonathan and Ellen before I came out here,

but I didn't at all, but they've just been so great to work with so...

First of all I got teamed up with Mike, which is fantastic,

and Kate set us the challenge of first of all finding coal, then extracting coal gas.

Now, it's funny, I thought about this a little bit and coal gas to me is this great historical thing.

I remember driving past gasworks. This is something that we were gonna try now.

Now as a scientist, as a geologist,

coming into an area and being asked to find something,

it's quite difficult because you need quite a lot of prior knowledge to find something out.

What Kate and I did on that first day,

was just go back to first principles

and follow some logical steps on how you would locate coal.

Now we're here in the San Juan mountains, big volcanic province, no coal here.

So we drove south, heading into the San Juan basin, a sedimentary basin,

and that's where you find coal, sandwiched between sedimentary rocks.

And it was easy, Colorado's absolutely chock-a-block with coal.

You can drive along and just see it outcropping in the layers.

It was absolutely beautiful.

But what we wanted to get into the show,

was this rather unusual thing that you only get in certain places.

This is a natural coal gas seep.

And um...

literally methane is just burping out of the ground,

as coal seams are tilted up.

And it's just seeping up through and it's a toxic gas so it kills off vegetation.

And it's really bubbling up so it's coming through a stream.

It's like Kate described it, like a Jacuzzi. That's what it's like.

It was like being in New Zealand in a thermal spring.

So we found this spot and just did this lovely bit where we actually collected this methane,

and set fire to it because it's toxic as I said, also highly flammable.

That was great fun. Kate was very easy to work with -

so encouraging, and we had such a laugh doing that.

Then the final part of day one was actually going to collect the coal.

So we drove to another location which was a beautiful pristine slope.

But you could just see the coal underneath the surface,

weathering out in the soil and the debris.

And Kate and I got digging and it is Kate and I that did the digging.

You don't get the crew involved. They're just standing back, letting us do it.

They do help out but this was just chipping away, finding a few bits of coal underground.

And we collected a whole load and brought it back for Mikey B...

who had got on fantastically and practically built this whole apparatus that you can see.

So the first day was just brilliant.

Then the second day was sort of more Rough Science, how I expected it to be.

We were around at our great workshop,

playing about, just having a great time,

working things through, trying things out on the plumbing,

and the chemistry side, which Mikey B was just brilliant on.

And we got... What happened on day two? I can't remember how far we got,

but essentially, we got it sort of happening on a small scale.

Mike might have described that.

But we were sure it was the right kind of coal.

Coal has different grades and we weren't sure how much gas we were gonna get out.

It wasn't looking that good at the end of day two,

but we were all sort of confident that day three, we could get it working.

We did a redesign on the furnace, which you'll have seen the programme I hope!

I'm really struggling to remember, because day three was just a triumph.

We redesigned our furnace as I say, improved the coal tar trap,

improved all the plumbing with a little help from the local hardware store,

got that all set up, worked out where we wanted our lights.

We had an old stove that we wanted to try out.

But the funny thing was,

and for me, I wasn't sure how this would go.

We didn't have a chance to try it out before we actually filmed it,

and this is what I've always wondered about Rough Science, how fixed is it?

Do they try it all out and then bring the cameras in when it's all working?

Not at all. It's just really honestly... we just set the thing up, we hadn't tried it,

then the cameras came along and right at the end of the programme, we did it for real,

because we wouldn't have had enough gas to test it so we filled the up the gasometer,

got everything ready and we weren't sure whether it was going to work but it did,

and it's just such a good feeling, like genuine hugs. It was brilliant!

So...that's it. We managed to extract the coal gas using the dry distillation process,

and light it and that was it.

I have to say I was really relieved after that day, day three,

and er...really, really looking forward to the next challenge.

Jonathan:

OK, so it's um...

the first rest day after the first programme.

And er...it was a fantastic programme.

We had a great time, great fun.

The last day was...um...

absolutely great, we were pushed to the limit to what we could do.

But we managed to succeed, so it's a really nice thing.

And so even by the afternoon,

before ending, we still didn't quite know whether it was going to work.

So it's like really not sure and that makes it very exciting.

Little bit tense but very exciting, much more exciting than tense really.

So we got the...Ellen and I got the Pelton wheel to go round,

we changed the nozzle, made it smaller and the jet was fantastic.

It went about 30 foot or so and that made the wheel go really fast.

A really big surprise for me was um...

how smooth the voltage was from the generator because it spins round,

the Pelton wheel spins round, and then that drives the generator.

So that tends... When it's going slow, the voltage that's produced is very pulsey.

You can see the lights flickering on and off.

And because we got it to go a bit faster, the lights didn't flash so much,

they were steady, but I thought that when we wired the radio up,

there would be a horrible whining noise in the background.

So I couldn't believe when we wired it up and it sounded great.

It was almost unbelievable,

knowing that the voltage was coming just from water turning this wheel.

I was really surprised.

Still not quite sure why it was so clear

but I guess there must have been some circuitry in the radio that smoothed it out.

That was a big surprise.

And it all came together.

It looked like a storm was coming in,

and so just as we were about to finish the programme -

it was the key moment when we all had to get our challenges to work -

it got quite stormy and the light disappeared and so...

their lights with the coal gas were just fantastic.

The little flickering lights from the generator were very visible,

and then it all came together in the final ten minutes right at the end,

and it's just magic.

I think we're all delighted,

and so on a high, I didn't get to sleep till about three o'clock this morning.

And then we went for a big hike today, so I'm feeling completely tired out

but really great and know that that first programme is a lot of fun, I think.

Mike:

OK, some thoughts on the first programme we shot.

Well, considering that we all had jetlag,

we all were suffering from altitude sickness because we were at almost 10,000 feet,

I think we all did pretty well.

And it's astonishing, the way these...

these programmes when you're filming them, you're really on an emotional roller coaster.

For instance, on day two of the shoot,

Jon and Ellen who were working together,

they were really getting on a pace and their challenge was really succeeding.

But at the end of day two, for Hermione and I,

for Hermione and me,

it wasn't going so well.

But then come day three, everything went the other way round.

We had such a fabulous start to day three

because we got our coal gas generator working so efficiently,

and almost producing coal gas on demand,

whereas Jonathan and Ellen started to meet a few challenges,

so it was really was this up and down, up and down.

I guess you gotta face that.

I'm always saying that you've got to be able to cope with failure,

cos most scientists face failure, a lot of failure along the way,

when they're doing their work.

You've just got to bounce back,

and put it behind you, rethink it.

That's what we did, that's the nice thing about going from day two to day three.

Overnight, we rethought the design of the coal gas generator,

and er...all of the modifications that we made,

came together to improve the efficiency of it and it worked like a dream,

it really did.

While I'm on the subject of Hermione, I think she's such a cracker.

I mean I'm really sad that Kathy Sykes isn't with us,

because Kathy is such an integral part of the Rough Science team of scientists,

but Hermione is a pretty good stand-in for her.

She gets in, she rolls her sleeves up,

she gets the dirt behind her fingernails and that's just the kind of attitude you want.

She looks like an English rose, but this one's got some thorns on it!

Sorry, Hermione!

What else can I say?

Oh, the tension at the end of day three...

It just...

we were just sitting around for a couple of hours cos we were quite ahead,

Hermione and I in our project on the third day,

so we had a few idle hours in the afternoon.

Then all of a sudden - it's like the weather goes calm and then suddenly there's a storm.

That's what added to the tension at the end of day three.

We had pretty heavy rain and there was no way we could have used this in the rain,

this coal gas generator, because the insulation wouldn't have worked,

and it would have lost its efficiency.

So it was touch and go whether we could actually generate any coal gas,

and because we have to finish these challenges at the end of day three,

then if the weather had been against us, we'd have been doomed to fail,

which is pretty unfair.

Anyway it all turned out.

It was a very tense day meanwhile

because they wanted to get the challenges, both Jonathan and Ellen's challenge

and Hermione's and I...

coming together at the end of day three together rather than separately,

so it was a difficult shoot, but it all went perfectly.

We took a few risks in going ahead with it rather than postponing for the day after,

but it went well.

Yeah, it went well so...I'm happy, it was a great start, it was great for all of us...

but particularly for Hermione and for the people behind the camera,

who were new to the team which is most of them.

All of them in fact are new to Rough Science,

so it's been a steep learning curve for them, but it's such a fabulous team.

I think we're all really happy that we've got one programme safely under our belts.

We're just about to start on TV programme two.

I hope it goes as well, but if it doesn't, that's not a problem.

If at the end of day three, we haven't got a safety lamp for the mine,

or if Hermione, who's got the most difficult challenge this time, with the cloud chamber,

if she hasn't succeeded then...

put it behind you, get on with TV three.

Anyway, if you're still awake, I think that's it from me.

I'll see you again, bye!

Content last updated: 11/10/2005