We hope you have had a great Summer break and are eager and ready to start a new season of presentations in September with the following schedule planned:

Sep 10  Vera Rubin and the LSST
Sep 24  Red to Gold – Prussian Blue

Oct 08  Stereograms – 3D science
Oct 22  Compost – science in your bin

If you have an interest in technology and science then give us a try. The venue is Kensington House from 2:30.  All u3a members are welcome.

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Our Technology and Science group looked at the history and science of ‘plague’ at the end of June. We covered several pandemics around the world but, because the presenter is squeamish, the gory details were only scraped over.

But Channel 5 has given us the chance to relive the 1665 English events.

Click on the image to watch the program. You will need to register with C5!

This image file is from the Wikimedia Commons  a freely licensed media file repository.

Wednesday’s talk was given by John Joyce (BA) who talked about all aspects of the Grenfell Towers incident. A very comprehensive presentation covered the incident itself, previous issues with similar buildings, building materials, council  issues and the inquiry.

He also gave detailed information on the outcomes of findings within all the industries and services involved including significant changes to legislation, likely to affect all construction in the future.

The presentation was broken down into 5 key areas:

• Grenfell summary
• Construction sector
• BSA summary
• Grenfell today
• What next for the fire industry ?

Our thanks to John and to Steve for inviting him to the group.

Further reading can be found in these links:

The Grenfell tower inquiry
The Hackitt Report
Grenfell – BBC podcast
Show me the bodies

Next month we will be looking at Luca Turin (11th) and plague (25th)

The May 28th meeting will now be looking at Grenfell Tower with a guest speaker.

Next month schedule should be:

June 11 – Luca Turin and the ‘Secret of Scent’
June 25 – The history and science of Plague

We then take our Summer Break and will resume on
Wednesday Sep 10th with subjects to be announced

On Wednesday 9th April we will be looking at the 1831 cooling, a global event that brought the planet dangerously close to disaster.

Join us at Kensington House from 2.30.

New members welcome.