Video Extras 4: To the Lighthouse Transcript

Coconuts

To the lighthouse diaries

The team goes to the lighthouse... but who's afraid of the challenge?

Ellen's diary
Jonathan's diary
Kathy's diary
Mike's diary

To the Lighthouse

The Rough Scientists have to build a lighthouse! But what do rocks have to do with it? Learn more in To the Lighthouse.

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Follow Ellen as she prepares coconut oil to light the lighthouse, as part of the BBC/OU's programme website for Rough Science 5

Ellen	Okay, so I'm collecting coconut because seeds have a lot of oil and if we're going to make this lighthouse really, really bright, and last all night long, we're going to need a lot of oil. And this is really easy to get to. Basically we hack through the husk. The nut's in the centre. And because something like a coconut, it can float all the way across the ocean and then germinate, that's a pretty big plant. It needs a lot of energy for the seed to germinate and start to grow. So it should have so much oil in here, and all we've got to do is collect, I don't know, fifty, a hundred, process it, and we'll be fine.
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Kate	Oh, you've got a coconut mountain. Do you want me to take over again? Or are you alright?
Ellen	This is it.
Kate	Ohhh!
Ellen	This is the last one. We're done!
Kate	That's forty cocoanuts or so?
Ellen	I think we did sixty or eighty yeah.
Kate	Ohhh. [LAUGHS] So what's the next stage?
Ellen	Um, I think we should eat it all! No - I've got to rinse it.
Kate	Mmm-huh.
Ellen	And then squeeze it out really, really well.
Kate	Yeah.
Ellen	And boil off that liquid.
Kate	Yeah.
Ellen	And so, overnight the oil will float to the top. The water will be on the bottom, we'll have our coconut oil.
Kate	By tomorrow morning?
Ellen	Yeah, I still have a lot to do but it'll be okay. This is the hard part.
Kate	Okay.
Ellen	Easy part's left.
Kate	I'll leave you in peace. If you want help with squeezing later...
Ellen	Thank you ma'am!
Kate	... give us a shout.
Ellen	So here's the result of what I squeezed, boiled and let sit overnight. The water is at the bottom, and the coconut residue in the oil is at the top, so the challenge is to separate the coconut residue from the oil.
Ellen	And how that's done - you carefully scoop out the coconut residue which is mixed with the oil and then basically fry it up.
Ellen	Now what happens after you fry it for about an hour, you end up with pure coconut oil on the top and...
Ellen	fried coconut residue.
Ellen	We've got our oil for our candles!