Mine Video Diaries: Ellen
Choose a video diary
Ellen's diary
Hermione's diary
Jonathan's diary
Mike's diary
Or choose another programme from the full list of video diaries.
Get more science
Get an extra helping of the Mine episode - exclusively here on Open2.net - with our mine video extras.
Exclusive video extra in which Ellen McCallie talks about the challenge for the Mine programme, from the sixth BBC/OU TV series Rough Science, based in Colorado
Watch
The video will play automatically once enough is loaded, please be patient. You'll need the free Quicktime Player (version 5 or later) to watch this video diary.
Read
So for this programme I got the beauty end. The bees, they were amazing, they were so docile, and to see what a group of insects can do when they work together, I mean the wax, the honey, the way they interact, and then also the way humans have learned to interact with them. We harvest our honey all the time and we really don’t upset them badly. No-one got stung so I really liked that part. And that was pretty much day one and day two I was dealing with bees, well dealing with bees or honey.
Collecting the wick, the plants for the wick, fabulous, easy, fun, but the science that really kind of rocked my head this time was the idea of flammable gas because the fact that you can contain a blaze really, I’d never really thought of that before. So that kind of spun my head a little bit and to get around, to get that, to feel comfortable with that took me a while. It was amazing to see.
And then Hermione’s thing, man! You know, you hear about radioactivity all the time but do you ever really see it? Hermione made a way that we could see radioactivity. We could see the ions moving from the rock into space, into our world, which I thought was really cool.
And then of course day three, what do you say? Jonathan does it again. He builds a machine that works, it can break, he can rebuild it by candlelight in the middle of a mine. Fabulous day. It was, I loved this programme.
Content last updated: 06/10/2005
Ellen McCallie
Ellen is a tropical ecologist and an educator who integrates research and education in varied locations - from forests of Brazil to venues in Central London. In addition to occasional television presenting, Ellen is working on a PhD in science education at King's College London. Her thesis work focuses on dialogue events about contemporary science and society. She continues to develop and facilitate science workshops for all age groups.
