Question: do you dig a lot?

Derek McKay-Bukowski answered on 17 Jun 2011:

Occasionally.

There have been two occasions recently, when I’ve had to pitch in and do some physical digging.

1.

One is the case in the photographs. We took part of a radio telescope and used a huge digger to pile snow on top of it. Our experiment was to see what would happen when it collapsed. As it turned out, we put over 7 tonnes of snow on it before the black-panel section gave way. Interestingly the timber frame was not affected.

But then we wanted to find out *how* it collapsed. Which part broke first and how did the parts break. That meant getting all the snow off it again. We couldn’t use the machine, as it might cause more damage. So we did it by hand.

Here’s a link to the story + video : http://kaira.sgo.fi/search/label/destructive%20test

2.

The other time that happened recently was about this time last year. We had dug loads of trenches to put in some cables for a radio telescope. These cables carry the signals underground. Before the digger could fill the trenches in with rock, we had to put down a layer of fine sand first (to stop the rocks from damaging the cables). That meant digging lots of sand in.

Pictures : http://blog.lofar-uk.org/2010/05/fresh-graves.html

Actually, there is not that much digging. And it makes for a good change from the regular work.