A paper written in December 1990 for a Gresham College Conference.
It shows the importance of high standards in teaching and learning and the way to achieve them.
To read the text please click on the link More Matter Less Art which will take you to the paper on the Britain Watch website.
A letter to the Sunday Telegraph which was published around 12th March 1985.
In your report (10th March) of Mr Powell’s address to Cambridge University Conservatives, your correspondent once again describes the native people of this country as white, like so many tins of paint, while dignifying the ethnic minorities by their, mainly national proper names – West Indian, Indian, Pakistani, etc. We, the ancestral owners of this land do not even merit a capital letter.
Why does your paper continue to refer so slightingly to our own people in this way? Do you not appreciate that this language usage is deliberately fostered by the race lobby to create a situation in which English people will not be identified as such, and therefore will have no particular claim on their own country England, which is named after them (not the other way round) incidentally.
Needless to say the Welsh and Scots are looked after by the media; in TV, radio and newspapers they are almost invariably referred to by their proper names.
Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the University of Cambridge, May 1965.
S F Bush
Summary
The subject of this thesis is the simplification and computation of mathematical representations, or models, of distributed chemical engineering systems in which there is flow and interaction of one or more quantities such as heat and mass. Counterflow heat-exchangers, regenerators, tubular reactors and packed distillation columns are examples of main types for which simplified representations have been obtained through the application of one of two methods. Among those systems for which one or other of the two methods is suitable, the choice of method is found to depend basically on the number of process transfer units in each stream.
One method, the diffusion representation, is based on a method applied by G I Taylor to the problem of solute dispersion in a capillary tube. In its present application the method replaces the set of partial differential equations, one for each stream, by a single parabolic partial differential equation. Such a transformation entails a certain error, mainly in the early part of the transient response, which is smallest for systems with the largest number of transfer units. If the error is acceptable, the transformation greatly simplifies subsequent numerical analysis.
The second method is an iterative method and is suitable for systems with a small number of exchange units. In contrast to the first method, it isolates the wave-like characteristics of exchange flow systems. In favourable cases it provides simple but accurate representations in either transfer function form or explicitly in the time domain. The iterations are shown to converge for a general class of flow system and form the basis of a numerical procedure for integrating the sets of first order hyperbolic differential equations which describe these systems.
The simplified representations obtained by application of the methods are compared with the standard representations by computing the step responses of both representations. The criteria of applicability which are proposed for the two methods are obtained by numerical experiments. Tables are presented comparing the numberical methods used in computing both simplified and standard models.
Project report for Part II of the Engineering Tripos, Cambridge University, 1960.
S F Bush
Summary
This is a report on the analysis, design and building of a servo-mechanism to control the movement of a uniform steel rod. The servo-mechanism is required to maintain the rod in a vertical position by moving it at the bottom. The bottom of the rod is fixed to a radial arm by a ball-bearing and is allowed only to move perpendicularly to the arm.
The report has been written with the intention of recording, more or less in order, the things which were done in all three stages of the project. With this in mind, those parts of the analysis which were central to the problems presented are included in the main text, while the subsidiary parts, and an account of abortive attempts to solve problems, are contained in appendices.
This report is written to illustrate the methods of dealing with the problems as they arose in the course of proceeding from the first analysis to the final building of a rather unusual system; it is not intended to be a concise account of the final design. An alternative design, using a relay, and basically simpler than the one actually used is, however, given towards the end. The report ends with a short conclusion which surveys the whole project in retrospect and in particular considers the role of the theoretical analysis.
