Welcome to NES 2025-26

Our Mission

Welcome to the Norwich Engineering Society, an active forum dedicated to fostering the exchange of ideas and experiences among all those passionate about engineering — past, present, and future.

For over a century, we have focused on the people behind groundbreaking innovations and their visionary concepts. Our mission is to enlighten, support, and develop our members in Norfolk and beyond. We achieve this through unique engagements, dynamic events, informative seminars, and insightful publications.

By championing the diverse disciplines within engineering, we ensure its continued evolution and relevance in an ever-changing world.

Airship Engineering

NES Honorary Member and Past President Tony Meacock started his talk with an anecdote about when he and his wife went on a hot air balloon and how he decided he would delve deeper into how they worked. An almost contemporaneous visit to the Pennoyer Centre Airship Museum at the local village of Pulham St Mary, started him off into the history and modern development of airships. Pulham St Mary was one of the major homes to Royal Navy airships of WW1 due to its relative proximity to the North Sea. From the end of that conflict to the early 1930s it became the home of airship development in the UK.

Historically, as Tony mentioned, hot air balloons were developed first. The earliest examples known so far come from China from about 280 AD. These craft were used in military signalling but did not have enough lifting power to carry humans. The first known human lifting hot air devices were those developed by the Montgolfier brothers in the late 18th century France. The problem with all balloons whether hot air or gas filled is that their direction of travel is to a large extent governed by the prevailing wind. Of much more interest is the class of devices called dirigibles-lifting devices that can be steered. These came to the fore at the end of the 19th century with a lot of the early work being carried out by Zeppelin in Bavaria in Germany. As Tony explained he managed to build a very light weight structure that was approximately ellipsoidal in shape that supported hydrogen filled gas bags. To get directed motion he developed lightweight petrol engines that drove propellers that gave the device thrust in the direction of the major axis. Steerage was obtained using rudders.

Tony spent the rest of the talk examining the trials and tribulations associated with airship design; what gas to use, what materials are needed to contain the gas. What power units to use. The story he told about choice of gas is interesting in that hydrogen is superficially the obvious one. It is relatively cheap to use but is difficult to contain and is chemically very active; the history of airship is littered with hydrogen fire accidents. The most notorious being the Hindenberg fire in New York in 1937. This put a virtual stop to the use of hydrogen as a lifting gas. The next most practical gas is Helium. This also has its problems such as availability and 8% less effective as a lifting agent.

Greenpower Challenge - Developing the electric F24 car

As explained by Bill Anthony in his opening remarks the talk was going to be split into two halves. The first part would be about the Greenpower Challenge and how both Town Close School and Langley School became involved. The second part, to be given by Denis Coltman, will describe how Langley School entered the competition and outline how their F24 car evolved to the successful vehicle that it has become.

Bill described how the Greenpower Charity grew from a realisation that youngsters of all ages and gender could be encouraged into engineering by a challenge that they could appreciate but was not beyond their technical capabilities. At the time it was realised that most youngsters were aware that electrical energy was vital for the future and that it was becoming important in transportation and that most youngsters were competitive. Thus the general Challenge which is to see who could build an electrically driven vehicle that could go the furthest for a given amount of electrical energy in a fixed time. As Bill stated absolutely classical STEM territory if correctly set up.

To keep matters under control it was decided that all teams should have identical batteries, motors and a basic safety structure. Outside this the teams can do what ever the like to improve performance, Importantly the students must be deeply involved in decision making and hands on skills as well as be the sole source of vehicle drivers. To cope with the wide school age range Greenpower actually set out three vehicle types; Goblin, F24 and F24+ with different constraints. Bill stressed that this talk concentrates on the F24 age range (11-16).

Dennis then described how his team at Langley went about developing their vehicle. In the early days they realised that friction both rolling and air drag were important features. They also learnt that battery charging history was vital and that batteries were very temperature sensitive in their efficiency. A lot of effort was put into designing and constructing lightweight streamlining and minimising wheel drag. Dennis was amazed at the enthusiasm that all members of his team showed and the skills they learnt. Dennis illustrated his section with many examples of where significant improvements were made to vehicle performance and how the team had contributed ideas.

Modern Fuels

Dr Miller opened her talk by telling her audience that she became really interested in fuel additives when she was appointed as General Manager of a company producing 2 hexile nitrates which are used to improve the efficiency of diesel engines when they are using certain types of fuel, Michelle explained that diesel crude can roughly be split into two classes; sweet and sour. Sweet being a fuel that ignites uniformly and cleanly producing relatively proportions of particulates whereas sour ignition produces higher particulate densities and is more erratic in its ignition characteristics. Particulates are not good if they get generally distributed in the atmosphere from a health point of view. Also, if particulates stay in the combustion environment for any length of time increase engine wear and reduce engine servicing intervals. Michelle hinted that the addition of hexile nitrates in the right amounts at a post refining stage sour fuels performance could be improved significantly.

Having indicated how she had arrived at her current situation, Michelle then indicated that it was important to realise that fossil fuels had reached an important crossroads. This was because of the global implications of the 2015 Paris COP agreement. The UK committed itself to reducing its output of greenhouse gases by 100% by 2050 and aimed to sell no new cars powered by fossil fuels. Dr Millers view is that current trends in infra structure replacement to allow sufficient numbers of non fossil fuel powered vehicles such as EVs or H2 is way behind target.

Michelle stated that some of the infra structure grid issues for charging EVs could be mitigated if some alternative non fossil fuels could be found to power vehicles. An obvious candidate is Hydrogen. as this fuel can either be used in a combustion configuration e.g. some JCB tractors or in a fuel cell electric power source environment as practised by several Japanese automotive companies. Sadly there are several problems associated with H2. One is that Hydrogen is chemically highly reactive especially if oxygen is around, Another according to Michelle is its molecular size is small so it is difficult to contain. However the major one is that the major production sources are currently based on fossil fuels; only a small amount is produced by the inefficient but GOP compliant electrolytic process.

The Genetical Engineering of Plants

Prof Jonathon Jones, Head of the John Innes Sainsbury Laboratory, opened his talk by stating that to cope with the worlds population growth by 2050 food production would have to increase by about 100%. Jonathon opined that this has to be done in a sustainable way ; land resources do not become exhausted and biological diversity must be maintained.

His view is that to be able to do this in an acceptable way in the western world consumer choice has to be assured. One of the problems with the way it was done in the 1990s was almost as if there was no choice; hence the pushback by so called concerned public of the time. However in those parts of the world where food shortages exist there was little objection to gene modification of plants.

Jonathon then gave a short description of what plant genes are and what role they play in plant development. He pointed out that if a gene study is done on plants what is found is that there is a wide range (sometimes called a diversity) of genes that make up a given plants general description. What plant breeders do is interbreed plants with certain desired characteristics to reinforce that characteristic. For example to prevent heavy wheat heads from stalk breakage it would appear to be sensible to reinforce plants with short strong stalks so that fewer of them break in sharp thundery rain conditions, This indeed has taken place over the years but as Jonathon emphasised this takes several decades.

Prof Jones indicated that since the early 1990s much progress has been made in the detailed knowledge of how plant genes are sequenced. He also indicated how genes can be altered by safely manipulating gene structures ( the method of gene editing) by inserting and deleting gene substructures to improve overall plant yields. As he indicated the same result could have been done by conventional plant breeding because of the wide gene diversity in a given plant butn it would have taken much longer. An interesting example of this gene editing method, described in a little detail by Jonathon, was tackling the problem of potato blight; one of the major infamous causes of the Irish Famine of the 1850s.