*Afterthoughts & Addenda* *Methodology notes...* *Use sieves -* It's a 10 mile (16km) slog along a gravel beach, measuring rocks that range from 25mm, in very small increments; I don't know how many sieves that would require, but it will not be practical to carry them 10 miles. *Measure by volume/displacement -* Probably not a bad idea in principle, but I think it would increase the time taken per sample. Also, whilst there may appear to be a ready source of water (the sea) nearby for this method, the surf zone on this beach is quite hazardous and people lose their lives there (A combination of factors: the smooth rounded pebbles provide no footing when a wave breaks; the beach slopes steeply into deep water and there are significant currents just offshore). Also I *do* actually want the length, width and thickness measurements as the overall oblong shape of the pebbles might have a trend in it. *Bring the rocks home to measure them -* Couple of problems with this; firstly it would mean that, at the end of the 10 mile walk, I would be carrying maybe 12 to 15 kilos of rocks, but also, it's illegal to remove rocks from this beach and people do get prosecuted for it. *Why the cup? -* We're testing the local legend that fishermen beaching here at night or in fog could tell their exact location by picking up and looking at a handful of stones. The cup is my attempt to standardise a 'fisherman's handful' - thus we get that rocks-per-handful estimation as well as the average weight and dimensions. *Do it in phases -* Chesil beach is only accessible on foot from the two ends, so this has to be done in one trip along the beach. *Other factors I have considered but didn't mention here:* There is a military firing range that crosses the middle of the beach, so I have to check that isn't in use before my trip (the firing times are published online). Also this has to take place after the end of August to minimise risk to ground-nesting birds. *Discarding outliers -* This might seem like it would introduce an arbitrary bias in the measurements, but it's a valid thing to do in statistics. The fishermen whose legend we are testing, would be looking at the sizes of the most common stones in their hand, not the unusual ones. *EDIT: Measure by photo -* just not likely to be sufficiently accurate to discern sub-millimetre measurements this way, using portable equipment, with no control over the lighting conditions.
I immediately said average volume by displacement of water. You could then calculate average density. Great minds and all that... I've no way to quantify it, but I do wonder if the stones 'sound' different when rubbed together in the fishermen's hands?
Quite so - I've never actually witnessed an incident where anyone came to harm there, but I have seen a number of near misses where someone was standing where they thought the waves wouldn't reach, then found themselves suddenly nearly up to their waist in water (and trying to run backwards when you are half underwater on loosened gravel is a recipe for disaster)
Would the 'roughness' of the pebbles at the allocated measurement locations also be a consideration? That 'salty dog' seemed to be enjoying herself! (Eva, I'm referring to! 🤣)
If there's a quick way to measure that, I'd like to capture the data but I can't think of a way (photographic methods might be tricky just because of the huge variation in size from one end of the beach vs the other)
In addition to potentially recording the sound of footsteps crunching on the different parts of the beach, you could also record the different timbres of Eva's borking when faced with a series of different sized stones. All in the name of acoustic geology of course.
If you're interested, over here in Ecology we use a random number generator to randomly place a quadrat within a set of coordinates, in which we count the present species (of plants and invertebrates). Using a random location eliminates any human bias in selecting a survey site. Even if we don't have access to a number generator we'll close our eyes, spin around a few times, and throw the quadrat somewhere in the area blind. For example when you picked your spot at the start of the video, you actively selected against places which included "too many" what you determined to be outliers. That's a bias based on unscientific observation, and will affect your data set.
I don't think we can overstate the importance of this vital scientific research. Its contribution to the wellbeing of this Shrimp devotee can not be quantified.
You could get an approximate average volume for each stone by measuring the volume of the container you have the stones in, and when you have filled it with stones topping it off with fresh water. The weight difference of pot with stones and pot with stones and water can be used to calculate the volume of water (divide by the density of water) pot volume minus water volume gives total stone volume. Hopefully that makes sense, obviously there would be errors here but larger container and more stones gives a better average (larger sample size and minimise relative measuring problems) but then time constraints with couning
Or put a known number of stones in a large measuring cylinder with water in it, the water level increase will tell you the total volume of them then divide for average
You may not be making scientific breakthroughs, but these types of videos make me incredibly happy and are arguably more important for 99% of the population. ❤
Theys videos are so wholesome Shrimp like a grandad "no offence Shrimp" to all of us he teaching us what plants are called and he shows us his gardening he doing and showing us how to cook this is what you tube all about.
Being from Belgium, I envy the clean pure coastline in Britain. Here everything is filled with buildings and promenades except for a few kms of nature reservates. When I watch your videos, walking in woodland or on the beaches, I wish I could be there to enjoy the purest nature in all it’s glory. Thank you for posting another great video.
I found a small patch of wild strawberries recently. Utterly delicious things with an almost artificial strawberry flavour followed by a syrupy sweetness. I was heartened to see a little girl and her mum picking some too.
If you have a small garden or balcony or large windowsill, you could get an alpine strawberry plant. Tiny fruits but so tasty and such an easy hardy plant. I've had a couple in the same pots for a few years, through winters. still going strong.
Just don't randomly plant them somewhere in your garden - unless you're a diligent gardener. You would never think so, but wild strawberries will spread really quickly. And while they're deceptively easy to remove superficially, they tend to pop up again and again, once they have taken root somewhere. I literally spent 2 hours this afternoon, helping my sister in law remove mostly wild strawberries from a somewhat neglected corner of the garden. It hadn't really been tendet to since spring and those things were absolutely everywhere.
Again thanks so much for your interesting video. I always look forward to the end of the week to see what you are up to. Looking forward to a peek at your new kitchen .
@@captainshakesbeard2453 not yet (i paused to have a shower as the excitement was too much), but we'll see edited for SPOILER: There's no cheese. still worth watching though
@@captainshakesbeard2453 I was at the other end of it last night, sadly no cheese on the beach but had some on my burger at least, Ohh I could make a Haiku out of that sentence!!!
3:17 I had to pause the video at this point for two reasons: 1. I was giggling, and 2: To post this imaginary scene which popped into my head: Mrs. Shrimp off in the distance speaking on the phone with her sister, "Mr. Shrimp is just playing with some pebbles right now." "Again?" Mrs. Shrimp's sister breathes in dismay. "Yes. I think the kitchen remodel just pushed him over the edge. And to be honest, I'm not sure Eva is not encouraging this behavior, what with her penchant for rocks." Ok, on with the video
I love this place, and a favorite summer time activity is a drive along the ‘coast road’ (if you know, you know) stopping to see Chesil from a viewing point
My father was born in Osmington Mills and was an engineer in the navy. So childhood trips to Weymouth and Chesil beach were not uncommon! This was quite a nostalgic film for me! I look forward to your expedition!
The invader line made me shout with laughter 😂😂😂 i love that you're doing this survey. I hope you digure out all you want to! A gravel beach is so interesting to me
I use this stretch of coast to demonstrate the globular nature of planet Earth to my students. View Portland Bill from the Cobb at Lyme Regis, then walk up the hill to the car park and look again, Portland Bill will have joined the mainland ;)
Another method that works with people who doubt the scientifically established shape of the earth: 1. Walk directly away from them to a distance of 500 metres or more 2. There is no step 2
A beautiful day for a walk on the beach, thanks for taking us along. Science projects are always fun, looking forward to this one. Hi Jenny! Hi Eva! Have a lovely weekend.
I came here initially to suggest sampling by volume and found your addendums. I then saw your mention of how this idea has been living in your mind for years now, which I think highlights such an interesting point for us as viewers. Often, you have been thinking and chewing through ideas for years while we as viewers are digesting the idea for the first time. I think many of us viewers get excited by the idea and proceed through a rush of ideas as it percolates. Of course in our excitement Its very easy as a viewer to forget that you have likely already considered many of these solutions and already deemed them unsuitable. Your ideas often capture our imaginations and you get the collective free flowing consciousness of thousands of people.
Your home experiments are some of my absolute favorite content. I always appreciate how different people approach the same problem, and I think it is so much fun to test out these local legends even if we think we know the answer already. I have three recommendations: The first is that if you want to save the ~2.5 minutes measuring the stones you could just take a photo of the sample rocks next to a reference of known size like a ruler or coin. You can then use software like ImageJ to measure the size of the rocks. ImageJ is from the US National Institutes of Health and is a free and open source image processing and analysis software that is used quite often in scientific research. The second recommendation is one that would add time, but would make your experiment more rigorous: take more than one sample at the same location. This would allow you to measure the variation within a handful of stones and could get you a better estimate of the true value of the average weight per stone. But I stress it is not necessary as judging from your other comments you plan on 30 measurements across a 16 km trek which already sounds like a major time investment on your part. The third recommendation is to maybe place a fill line on your cup (perhaps calibrated to your "handful"), or just say you will fill the cup to the maximum. That way you can better control the initial volume of rocks in your sample at each location. This may not be all that important since your final measures are on a per rock basis. I do think it would take some pressure off of you to decide what is a good enough sample which in the long run might save you some energy and stress.
I'm expecting the variance in average pebble sizes to be fractions of a millimetre between some pairs of sample locations. That's not going to be measurable from photos
After reading some of the comments I find that most of what I would suggest has already been said. One thing I didn't see is in reference to counting. I believe I read, sometime in the past, that the human eye easily recognizes sets of 1, 2 , 3, 4 & 5. I've found, when counting small 'things', that taking a set of two then a set of three allows me to count by fives. Also easier to count in my head when counting by fives.
I work in a scrapyard, and, to stop errant bits of metal getting into our boots, we have long over-trousers that cover the exposed parts of our boots. In three years, I have had one tiny bit of wire get into my boot.
Interesting, I can tell the difference between salt and sugar by the sound it makes when I shake the container, it makes sense that different sized gravel makes different sounds when walked on
Wasn’t it Sam Vimes who could tell by the feel of the cobbles under the thin soles of his boots where he was in Ankh-Morpork? That was the first thing that came to mind when you mentioned the lore of sailors knowing how far down the beach they were by sizing the gravel. I don’t doubt you will find differences in the sound of the stones you walk on. Even on the fairly homogeneous beach sands of California I could hear differences in the sounds of the sands I walked on, and they were all different from the sand at Corpus Christi Texas which sounded different from California beach sands. Arizona desert sand, being composed of sharper grains, sounds completely different from any beach sands. EDIT: my spielchucker thought Sam’s last name is Vimeo’s.
Chesil beach always reminds me of my father, not because of the beach itself but because he always used to refer to a dirty 'pebbledashed' toilet bowl as looking like Chesil Beach.
Be sure to visit West Bexington, just east of Burton Bradstock. And if you have time, the food in the Manor House Hotel is the best on the coast, and very reasonably priced. To get there take Swyre Road south from the B3157 at Swyre village. It's signposted for the hotel, and you can drive down to the beach and park at a pay-and-display car park. A magical little place. 😃
Couple of (constructive) criticisms and suggestions for your methodology from a geologist:- 1) selecting your sample area should be more randomised. Consider making yourself a quadrat - a square frame you can throw down to randomly select a patch of ground. 2) don't throw away the "outliers", they're still a valid part of your sample. Just note them separately when you record your sample. All data is potentially useful. 3) a laminated card with printed diameter circles is useful for estimating gravel sizes.An aggregate of length & diameter with a note on sphericity and angularity is the usual way it's classified so you don't need to get the calipers out. 4) standardise your sample cup filling. I'd suggest filling to the point where a flat cover just about still rests on the rim all round. Looking forward to your results :) Oh and those alliums look like Wild Leeks - they can grow up to a meter tall. Not sure if they're native or introduced but I've seen them in various places on the south coast.
Thanks - appreciate the tips - Yeah, maybe I'll measure the outliers separately and we can look at two sets of data. I don't think it's invalid to exclude them from the main data as it's the central portion of the bell curve that is most pertinent to the local legend being tested here. I don't think classifying the gravel by eye or sieve will suffice - I am expecting that the differences between samples 500m apart may be less than a millimetre in places.
The stems of Sea Kale are lovely - I can't eat normal Kale, as I find it somewhat indigestible, but Sea Kale stems are definitely good to eat. If you do pick some of the stems, wash them well when you get them home.
So glad you have returned to this experiment! You seem to have picked the methodology that provides the most information for the least baggage. I think you are right about Babington's Leek - found on dunes and rocky ground near the sea, and grows up to 2m tall. So says the excellent wild flower key by Rose (!). There are some creeping plants among the birdsfoot trefoil (about 11 minutes) with orangeish-red five-petalled flowers. Reminds me of a scarlet pimpernel. Anyone know what this is?
If youre looking for a measure of the size of the pebbles, you might like to use the displacement method for measuring volume! It would require purchasing some graduated cylinders, but I'm sure you could find some fairly cheap plastic ones online.
This is a very interesting experiment. May I suggest some kind of under platform for your scale such as a rigid peace of plastic or similar. I think having a base for your scale would keep constant any variation from the changes in surfaces you will encounter during your travels. Looking forward to the future video.
I think the thing that wasn't ragwort was Tansy (Tanacetum vulgare) which is closely related to Feverfew (Tanacetum parthenium), It makes an amazing blue colour essential oil and has been used medicinally for centuries despite being reasonably toxic.
Its only toxic once it grows into summer. The spring growth is much less toxic,so maybe the essential oil is harvested at the beginning of the growing season? It was used to flavour cakes.
@@pheart2381 most essential oils are harvested from mature plants when the oils have had time to develop, but are on the whole not recommended for internal use so I don't think its an issue for the oil, but I really don't think I would like the flavour, the plant has a camphor or pineish smell, it might go well in a cake but I'm not so sure.
You can buy sock covers, (not sure real name) that gardeners/landscapers use to stop crud getting in shoes. They have elastic at the top to keep close to your ankle and then flared out to go over the top of your shoes.
Things to note, I find it harder to walk portland end takes longer on larger pebbles, walk next to the fleet touching water not sea side much easier, rescue very hard ILB can’t go up fleet ALB needs to go round the bill, moonfleet easy to get help via someone with tender or canoe good luck mate
Good to know - if we run out of energy or time, we'll hop over to the fleet side (the survey itself needs to take place close to the sea side, on account of testing the legend about fishermen being able to judge their landing location from the stones.
Morning Mike. That was a lovely video. Thank you. What was the thing in your left hand? It looked like a lead fishing weight with wires for the individual lines. Am I remotely close? We look forward to your Saturday stream. Thanks Mike too.
I picked up a couple of pieces of discarded fishing gear for proper disposal - yeah, one of them was a 'breakway' weight like this one www.veals.co.uk/product/breakaway-short-tail-lead
You could use your arduino skills to build a little stone counter with a motor and a little beam-break sensor, potentially measuring them in the process.
That does sound like a fascinating project to try. I doubt I could get it up and running in time, but it seems like something I should work on regardless.
@@AtomicShrimp Counting would be easy. Measuring, less so, as you'd need several, non-interfering beam sensors (or lasers!) like 1 or 2 mm apart, and then count how many are broken as a stone goes past the counting element.
Measuring stone size: get a measuring jug, put a known quantity of water in, put some uniformly sized stones into the water, observe the increase in level, divide by number of stones to get mean volume per stone.
Sea Kale is actually a beet, which is weird.I had gravel like this in my fish tank. I had your mystery allium back in Texas. It might be Elephant garlic,Allium gigantium or Siberian hardneck garlic.I had all of those volunteer everywhere. Elephant garlic is related to leeks if I remember.
I think you may be mixing up sea kale with sea beet. Both relatives or ancestors of cultivated vegetables but different families; sea kale is in the cabbage/mustard family
I think you should keep the outliers in the samples, as you're skewing you data collection by leaving them out. Maybe collect your samples with your eyes closed to make it a random sample at the site, and measure the position on your phone so that you can put the sample sizes on a map too? I did experimental design at uni a good while ago, feel free to ignore my suggestion!
It's not unusual to discard outliers; besides, the thing we're chiefly testing is the local legend about fishermen judging their location from a handful of stones; they would not be looking at outliers.
It's your experiment, only you can define the parameters of it. I look forward to seeing your results. Belly rubs to your research assistant, Eva. She's better at the hole digging, rather than the sampling, I suspect!,@@AtomicShrimp
maybe you could line the tray with some grid/maths paper to get an easy/approximate measurement of the rocks at a glance? not very elegant but it could save time
Suggestion: If you want to say something about size, why not use volume? You are by the sea so it would be relatively easy to measure the displacement of x stones in (sea)water. Use an old measuring cup and fill it to 500ml say you drop in 25 stones and the measuring cup reads 550ml so the displacement is 50ml. Want be more accurate: you could use syringes of a few sizes and suck out the water and read off their more accurate scales.
You could measure volume, archemedes style, by displacing water. You could back calculate average density because you know the fixed volume of the cup, and therefore you'd know the average mass of the stones
Speaking of interesting sea/beach flora. I came across a sea poppy growing in the shingle of my local beach. I do believe its quite a rarity as iv never seen one before or since. Not that i make an effort to scour every part of that beach. But im familiar enough with it to aknowledge it as an incredibly uncommon find and a nice one to see as im rather a fan of that type of plant. Theres a decent amount of different poppy species around my local area
Would you not save time counting many hundreds of smaller stones further down the beach by swapping the method and counting 100 or 200 stones and then weighing them? Also, to measure the individual stones, you could measure their density with a displacement can. Finally, this is the sort of research that would fit perfectly in the adventure theme park I hope to create one day in the future. 'Word of Gravel' It will have all 2 types of gravel: large and small. We wont have any of that dodgy 'sand' muck at World of Gravel. It will be for gravel purists only.
Tip the stones into a know volume, a cup for instance, pour water to fill container of stones, pour the water off the stones into a measuring jug, volume of water in measuring jug minus known volume equals volume of stones. Keep all the water. Might help the science. Just read your addenda.
Maybe instead of measuring dimensions of X number of stones with a ruler, measuring a larger amount in a beaker of water would give you a faster and more accurate result. Displacement of water will give you volume, which is probably better than a length and width of a pebble since they can be so irregular.
Possible faster method: spread the stones out in a single layer on the tray and photograph them. Upload the photos for people on the Internet to count. Maybe there's somebody skilled in image recognition software who could automate it. I think a uniform contrasting color on the tray should make this easier.
I've never seen a sea pea, but I shall look out for it next time I'm on the south East or south coast. I love the pea family 💚 I shan't eat any. I like my muscly bum haha Could you do a vid on common and Latin names and why and etymology etc? That would be really fun.
That was an incredibly important scientific piece of work with the stones but you didn't have the ultimate professional assistant by way of Eva to oversee proceedings.
Trying to remember my survey techniques from.decades ago. Hmm. I recall photos of roots or canopy and there was a way of working out coverage % ( with a grid for scale).... can't recall details tho. And I'm sure nowadays a there will be software that can calculate it pretty easily.
If you can get yourself to Shoreham-by-Sea and the car park by Shoreham Fort, then you will be able to access the shingle beach via a boardwalk. That is the one I personally know of, but there may be others x
I wonder if your "removing the outliers" might bias the sample since I expect you're only removing the large outliers, not the small ones. A better sampling might be to just try to scoop the sample with your scoop on one action, and level it off the below the brim of the scoop (see below). Grabbing a handful at a time might bias things, though perhaps not in a meaningful manner. Perhaps knowing the density of the rocks might be useful, there may be a trend if the more easily eroded parts of the rock have a different density than the tougher parts. This would be easy to measure: once the cup of rocks is weighed, fill it brimful with water (all stones must be below the brim), and measure the volume of water required to do so. From this the total volume of the stones can be calculated and thence their average density. Bring along a sheet of graph paper, and take a photo of a small sample of the rocks against the graph paper. It would be fairly simple to analyze the images to get dimensional statistics on the rocks, at least in two dimensions. If you know their volume (see above) and what fraction of the total sample has been photographed (weigh the photographed rocks) you can get some idea of the third dimension (which, by the way, in the sample shown, is quite consistent).
I would love to measure the volume, but I think it probably introduces too much additional time into the measurement process - we're going to have to walk 16km, stopping every 500m for the measurements, and we have to do this in a single day (because you can only get on and off the beach at the ends)
When I did a similar exercise at uni, we measured the pebbles in 3 dimensions. (Length, width, thickness) Perhaps you could do the same, and plot average ratio of L:W:T for each sample location on a triangle graph?
That's what I hope to do - the pebbles are all pretty much shaped like a flattened jellybean, so they have clearly identifiable length, width and thickness
Could you fill the cup of stones with water after measuring the mass and re weigh it to work out the volume of the stones and then divide by the number of stones? Would require you to bring a big bottle of water with you but would be quicker than measuring with the callipers.
I've discussed the limitations of volumetric measuring in the pinned comment thread. One thing I would also miss out on is the measurement of proportion. I don't know if the stones might be flatter or longer toward one end or the other -they are all approximately the shape of a flattened jellybean so it might actually be possible to measure length, width and thickness
Those stones are why I never really liked English beaches. One of the few plusses of coming to Australia is the beaches are nice and sandy, generally very soft. It is really interesting though that the stone size shrinks from one end of the beach to the other, I wouldn't have expected that.
@@AtomicShrimp Interestingly, I just saw you mention exactly that in a comment positivity video. I suspect I just never went to them, or if I did it was before my earliest memories (moved here when I was 4). Even here in Australia some beaches have a coarser grain to the point where it's a bit unpleasent to walk on barefoot. Just lucky enough to live in Queensland where most are soft white sand.
Do you think you might introduce bias by selecting the sites instead of chucking a marker randomly and using that spot? Then using multiple sites in an area to smooth out outliers and anomalies?
The sites are going to be GPS targets that are set in advance. I think when it comes down to the precise collection point, the only difference is the number of outliers on the surface - the main body of the gravel is surprisingly uniform in any given zone
Wouldn't it be easier to have a set of sieves with increasing hole sizes? With those you don't just just get two values (grams per stone, average size) but a distribution: x% stones between size a and b, y% stones between size b and c, and so on. I would imagine you get a bell curve, with the peak/mean of that curve moving as you make your way across the beach.
*Afterthoughts & Addenda*
*Methodology notes...*
*Use sieves -* It's a 10 mile (16km) slog along a gravel beach, measuring rocks that range from 25mm, in very small increments; I don't know how many sieves that would require, but it will not be practical to carry them 10 miles.
*Measure by volume/displacement -* Probably not a bad idea in principle, but I think it would increase the time taken per sample. Also, whilst there may appear to be a ready source of water (the sea) nearby for this method, the surf zone on this beach is quite hazardous and people lose their lives there (A combination of factors: the smooth rounded pebbles provide no footing when a wave breaks; the beach slopes steeply into deep water and there are significant currents just offshore). Also I *do* actually want the length, width and thickness measurements as the overall oblong shape of the pebbles might have a trend in it.
*Bring the rocks home to measure them -* Couple of problems with this; firstly it would mean that, at the end of the 10 mile walk, I would be carrying maybe 12 to 15 kilos of rocks, but also, it's illegal to remove rocks from this beach and people do get prosecuted for it.
*Why the cup? -* We're testing the local legend that fishermen beaching here at night or in fog could tell their exact location by picking up and looking at a handful of stones. The cup is my attempt to standardise a 'fisherman's handful' - thus we get that rocks-per-handful estimation as well as the average weight and dimensions.
*Do it in phases -* Chesil beach is only accessible on foot from the two ends, so this has to be done in one trip along the beach.
*Other factors I have considered but didn't mention here:* There is a military firing range that crosses the middle of the beach, so I have to check that isn't in use before my trip (the firing times are published online). Also this has to take place after the end of August to minimise risk to ground-nesting birds.
*Discarding outliers -* This might seem like it would introduce an arbitrary bias in the measurements, but it's a valid thing to do in statistics. The fishermen whose legend we are testing, would be looking at the sizes of the most common stones in their hand, not the unusual ones.
*EDIT: Measure by photo -* just not likely to be sufficiently accurate to discern sub-millimetre measurements this way, using portable equipment, with no control over the lighting conditions.
I immediately said average volume by displacement of water. You could then calculate average density. Great minds and all that... I've no way to quantify it, but I do wonder if the stones 'sound' different when rubbed together in the fishermen's hands?
Rogue waves are another concern on Chesil beach.
Quite so - I've never actually witnessed an incident where anyone came to harm there, but I have seen a number of near misses where someone was standing where they thought the waves wouldn't reach, then found themselves suddenly nearly up to their waist in water (and trying to run backwards when you are half underwater on loosened gravel is a recipe for disaster)
Would the 'roughness' of the pebbles at the allocated measurement locations also be a consideration? That 'salty dog' seemed to be enjoying herself! (Eva, I'm referring to! 🤣)
If there's a quick way to measure that, I'd like to capture the data but I can't think of a way (photographic methods might be tricky just because of the huge variation in size from one end of the beach vs the other)
Your inquisitive nature is one of the cornerstones of this channel. Very entertaining video as always
In addition to potentially recording the sound of footsteps crunching on the different parts of the beach, you could also record the different timbres of Eva's borking when faced with a series of different sized stones. All in the name of acoustic geology of course.
If you're interested, over here in Ecology we use a random number generator to randomly place a quadrat within a set of coordinates, in which we count the present species (of plants and invertebrates). Using a random location eliminates any human bias in selecting a survey site. Even if we don't have access to a number generator we'll close our eyes, spin around a few times, and throw the quadrat somewhere in the area blind.
For example when you picked your spot at the start of the video, you actively selected against places which included "too many" what you determined to be outliers. That's a bias based on unscientific observation, and will affect your data set.
I don't think we can overstate the importance of this vital scientific research. Its contribution to the wellbeing of this Shrimp devotee can not be quantified.
We solving world hunger with this one bois!
Man wanders the beach, picking up seeds, weighing rocks, and wandering in ww2 pillboxes. Living more than most.
“That’s not an invader, that’s Jenny” 😂
😂
😂😂😂
Jenny invaded shrimp's heart
My mum used to sing “chesil beach, faraway in time”… nostalgic seeing this!
You could get an approximate average volume for each stone by measuring the volume of the container you have the stones in, and when you have filled it with stones topping it off with fresh water. The weight difference of pot with stones and pot with stones and water can be used to calculate the volume of water (divide by the density of water) pot volume minus water volume gives total stone volume.
Hopefully that makes sense, obviously there would be errors here but larger container and more stones gives a better average (larger sample size and minimise relative measuring problems) but then time constraints with couning
Or put a known number of stones in a large measuring cylinder with water in it, the water level increase will tell you the total volume of them then divide for average
Fun seeing which plants are here in US as well as UK, and hearing what the common name is and how it pronounced. I enjoy your rambles💮
You may not be making scientific breakthroughs, but these types of videos make me incredibly happy and are arguably more important for 99% of the population. ❤
Theys videos are so wholesome Shrimp like a grandad "no offence Shrimp" to all of us he teaching us what plants are called and he shows us his gardening he doing and showing us how to cook this is what you tube all about.
I ❤ your field trips Mr Shrimp. Thank you kindly ❤
Being from Belgium, I envy the clean pure coastline in Britain. Here everything is filled with buildings and promenades except for a few kms of nature reservates. When I watch your videos, walking in woodland or on the beaches, I wish I could be there to enjoy the purest nature in all it’s glory. Thank you for posting another great video.
nice cameo from the solway firth spaceman at 5:15 or so
I found a small patch of wild strawberries recently. Utterly delicious things with an almost artificial strawberry flavour followed by a syrupy sweetness. I was heartened to see a little girl and her mum picking some too.
If you have a small garden or balcony or large windowsill, you could get an alpine strawberry plant. Tiny fruits but so tasty and such an easy hardy plant. I've had a couple in the same pots for a few years, through winters. still going strong.
Just don't randomly plant them somewhere in your garden - unless you're a diligent gardener. You would never think so, but wild strawberries will spread really quickly. And while they're deceptively easy to remove superficially, they tend to pop up again and again, once they have taken root somewhere. I literally spent 2 hours this afternoon, helping my sister in law remove mostly wild strawberries from a somewhat neglected corner of the garden. It hadn't really been tendet to since spring and those things were absolutely everywhere.
Again thanks so much for your interesting video. I always look forward to the end of the week to see what you are up to. Looking forward to a peek at your new kitchen .
My favourite Saturday upload 💯💙
thought it said 'cheese beach' and i was terribly excited
still, will watch regardless
So there's no cheese?
@@captainshakesbeard2453 not yet (i paused to have a shower as the excitement was too much), but we'll see
edited for SPOILER:
There's no cheese. still worth watching though
@@captainshakesbeard2453 I was at the other end of it last night, sadly no cheese on the beach but had some on my burger at least, Ohh I could make a Haiku out of that sentence!!!
Yesss another Shrimp vid for my ride home
I've been trying to watch every vid and am about 65% through
3:17 I had to pause the video at this point for two reasons: 1. I was giggling, and 2: To post this imaginary scene which popped into my head:
Mrs. Shrimp off in the distance speaking on the phone with her sister, "Mr. Shrimp is just playing with some pebbles right now."
"Again?" Mrs. Shrimp's sister breathes in dismay.
"Yes. I think the kitchen remodel just pushed him over the edge. And to be honest, I'm not sure Eva is not encouraging this behavior, what with her penchant for rocks."
Ok, on with the video
😂😂😂😂😂😂
I love this place, and a favorite summer time activity is a drive along the ‘coast road’ (if you know, you know) stopping to see Chesil from a viewing point
My father was born in Osmington Mills and was an engineer in the navy. So childhood trips to Weymouth and Chesil beach were not uncommon! This was quite a nostalgic film for me! I look forward to your expedition!
The invader line made me shout with laughter 😂😂😂 i love that you're doing this survey. I hope you digure out all you want to! A gravel beach is so interesting to me
"I plan to spend the whole day looking at gravel."
I love this channel.
I use this stretch of coast to demonstrate the globular nature of planet Earth to my students. View Portland Bill from the Cobb at Lyme Regis, then walk up the hill to the car park and look again, Portland Bill will have joined the mainland ;)
Another method that works with people who doubt the scientifically established shape of the earth:
1. Walk directly away from them to a distance of 500 metres or more
2. There is no step 2
@@AtomicShrimp 😂
A beautiful day for a walk on the beach, thanks for taking us along. Science projects are always fun, looking forward to this one. Hi Jenny! Hi Eva! Have a lovely weekend.
I came here initially to suggest sampling by volume and found your addendums. I then saw your mention of how this idea has been living in your mind for years now, which I think highlights such an interesting point for us as viewers. Often, you have been thinking and chewing through ideas for years while we as viewers are digesting the idea for the first time. I think many of us viewers get excited by the idea and proceed through a rush of ideas as it percolates. Of course in our excitement Its very easy as a viewer to forget that you have likely already considered many of these solutions and already deemed them unsuitable.
Your ideas often capture our imaginations and you get the collective free flowing consciousness of thousands of people.
When I read you were on Chesil I knew you were a long way down the beach when I saw how small them stones were. I'm used to the boulders haha
Your home experiments are some of my absolute favorite content. I always appreciate how different people approach the same problem, and I think it is so much fun to test out these local legends even if we think we know the answer already.
I have three recommendations:
The first is that if you want to save the ~2.5 minutes measuring the stones you could just take a photo of the sample rocks next to a reference of known size like a ruler or coin. You can then use software like ImageJ to measure the size of the rocks. ImageJ is from the US National Institutes of Health and is a free and open source image processing and analysis software that is used quite often in scientific research.
The second recommendation is one that would add time, but would make your experiment more rigorous: take more than one sample at the same location. This would allow you to measure the variation within a handful of stones and could get you a better estimate of the true value of the average weight per stone. But I stress it is not necessary as judging from your other comments you plan on 30 measurements across a 16 km trek which already sounds like a major time investment on your part.
The third recommendation is to maybe place a fill line on your cup (perhaps calibrated to your "handful"), or just say you will fill the cup to the maximum. That way you can better control the initial volume of rocks in your sample at each location. This may not be all that important since your final measures are on a per rock basis. I do think it would take some pressure off of you to decide what is a good enough sample which in the long run might save you some energy and stress.
I'm expecting the variance in average pebble sizes to be fractions of a millimetre between some pairs of sample locations. That's not going to be measurable from photos
Love spending time with you
"Escaped Leeks" is now my new favourite phrase. It really put a smile on my face...😂😂
EscapedLeek would be an amazing youtube/gamer name
wikileeks
@@likebot. 😂
They were leaked leeks
@@gravic48 dash it, I was going to make that joke lol 😉
After reading some of the comments I find that most of what I would suggest has already been said. One thing I didn't see is in reference to counting. I believe I read, sometime in the past, that the human eye easily recognizes sets of 1, 2 , 3, 4 & 5. I've found, when counting small 'things', that taking a set of two then a set of three allows me to count by fives. Also easier to count in my head when counting by fives.
Interesting. I'll try that out!
😂 “thats not an invader thats Jenny” 😂
haha, got me too 😂
😂😂😂
I love these field road trips & thanks for sharing Atomic shrimp 🦐😊👍
Science in the wild, love it
Puttees is the magic word for keeping stones out of boots. Just a cheap version from a work wear supplier will do the job.
I work in a scrapyard, and, to stop errant bits of metal getting into our boots, we have long over-trousers that cover the exposed parts of our boots. In three years, I have had one tiny bit of wire get into my boot.
Interesting, I can tell the difference between salt and sugar by the sound it makes when I shake the container, it makes sense that different sized gravel makes different sounds when walked on
A detailed survey of gravel, you say? I'm up for that!
Wasn’t it Sam Vimes who could tell by the feel of the cobbles under the thin soles of his boots where he was in Ankh-Morpork?
That was the first thing that came to mind when you mentioned the lore of sailors knowing how far down the beach they were by sizing the gravel.
I don’t doubt you will find differences in the sound of the stones you walk on. Even on the fairly homogeneous beach sands of California I could hear differences in the sounds of the sands I walked on, and they were all different from the sand at Corpus Christi Texas which sounded different from California beach sands. Arizona desert sand, being composed of sharper grains, sounds completely different from any beach sands.
EDIT: my spielchucker thought Sam’s last name is Vimeo’s.
I ’m soo much admire your wifes patiense…😂
Chesil beach always reminds me of my father, not because of the beach itself but because he always used to refer to a dirty 'pebbledashed' toilet bowl as looking like Chesil Beach.
Be sure to visit West Bexington, just east of Burton Bradstock. And if you have time, the food in the Manor House Hotel is the best on the coast, and very reasonably priced. To get there take Swyre Road south from the B3157 at Swyre village. It's signposted for the hotel, and you can drive down to the beach and park at a pay-and-display car park. A magical little place. 😃
Couple of (constructive) criticisms and suggestions for your methodology from a geologist:-
1) selecting your sample area should be more randomised. Consider making yourself a quadrat - a square frame you can throw down to randomly select a patch of ground.
2) don't throw away the "outliers", they're still a valid part of your sample. Just note them separately when you record your sample. All data is potentially useful.
3) a laminated card with printed diameter circles is useful for estimating gravel sizes.An aggregate of length & diameter with a note on sphericity and angularity is the usual way it's classified so you don't need to get the calipers out.
4) standardise your sample cup filling. I'd suggest filling to the point where a flat cover just about still rests on the rim all round.
Looking forward to your results :)
Oh and those alliums look like Wild Leeks - they can grow up to a meter tall. Not sure if they're native or introduced but I've seen them in various places on the south coast.
Thanks - appreciate the tips - Yeah, maybe I'll measure the outliers separately and we can look at two sets of data. I don't think it's invalid to exclude them from the main data as it's the central portion of the bell curve that is most pertinent to the local legend being tested here.
I don't think classifying the gravel by eye or sieve will suffice - I am expecting that the differences between samples 500m apart may be less than a millimetre in places.
The stems of Sea Kale are lovely - I can't eat normal Kale, as I find it somewhat indigestible, but Sea Kale stems are definitely good to eat. If you do pick some of the stems, wash them well when you get them home.
So glad you have returned to this experiment! You seem to have picked the methodology that provides the most information for the least baggage.
I think you are right about Babington's Leek - found on dunes and rocky ground near the sea, and grows up to 2m tall. So says the excellent wild flower key by Rose (!).
There are some creeping plants among the birdsfoot trefoil (about 11 minutes) with orangeish-red five-petalled flowers. Reminds me of a scarlet pimpernel. Anyone know what this is?
Looks very like scarlet pimpernel to me.
Thanks!
I've set myself a calendar entry chesil beach pebble size atomic shrimp. And totally forgot why I did that.
If youre looking for a measure of the size of the pebbles, you might like to use the displacement method for measuring volume! It would require purchasing some graduated cylinders, but I'm sure you could find some fairly cheap plastic ones online.
I was about to suggest displacement for measuring the stones as well
This is a very interesting experiment. May I suggest some kind of under platform for your scale such as a rigid peace of plastic or similar. I think having a base for your scale would keep constant any variation from the changes in surfaces you will encounter during your travels. Looking forward to the future video.
I think the thing that wasn't ragwort was Tansy (Tanacetum vulgare) which is closely related to Feverfew (Tanacetum parthenium), It makes an amazing blue colour essential oil and has been used medicinally for centuries despite being reasonably toxic.
Its only toxic once it grows into summer. The spring growth is much less toxic,so maybe the essential oil is harvested at the beginning of the growing season? It was used to flavour cakes.
@@pheart2381 most essential oils are harvested from mature plants when the oils have had time to develop, but are on the whole not recommended for internal use so I don't think its an issue for the oil, but I really don't think I would like the flavour, the plant has a camphor or pineish smell, it might go well in a cake but I'm not so sure.
You can buy sock covers, (not sure real name) that gardeners/landscapers use to stop crud getting in shoes. They have elastic at the top to keep close to your ankle and then flared out to go over the top of your shoes.
Oh my: did Jenny take a little tumble? 5:08
Really enjoyed this watching this journey. Thanks for taking us along.
Things to note, I find it harder to walk portland end takes longer on larger pebbles, walk next to the fleet touching water not sea side much easier, rescue very hard ILB can’t go up fleet ALB needs to go round the bill, moonfleet easy to get help via someone with tender or canoe good luck mate
Good to know - if we run out of energy or time, we'll hop over to the fleet side (the survey itself needs to take place close to the sea side, on account of testing the legend about fishermen being able to judge their landing location from the stones.
Morning Mike. That was a lovely video. Thank you. What was the thing in your left hand? It looked like a lead fishing weight with wires for the individual lines. Am I remotely close? We look forward to your Saturday stream. Thanks Mike too.
I picked up a couple of pieces of discarded fishing gear for proper disposal - yeah, one of them was a 'breakway' weight like this one www.veals.co.uk/product/breakaway-short-tail-lead
Looks like our brown beans
A little bit hard to chew…
I have lived on Portland and used to love the causeway on a bike in summer :)
take 4 towels :)
If you want to weigh something from Chesil Beach you should take them to Weighmouth… I’m here all week.
🤣🤣
You could use your arduino skills to build a little stone counter with a motor and a little beam-break sensor, potentially measuring them in the process.
That does sound like a fascinating project to try. I doubt I could get it up and running in time, but it seems like something I should work on regardless.
@@AtomicShrimp Counting would be easy. Measuring, less so, as you'd need several, non-interfering beam sensors (or lasers!) like 1 or 2 mm apart, and then count how many are broken as a stone goes past the counting element.
@@TomOConnor-BlobOpera I think the complex part of it might be that the things to be counted are expected to be quite a wide range of sizes
Measuring stone size: get a measuring jug, put a known quantity of water in, put some uniformly sized stones into the water, observe the increase in level, divide by number of stones to get mean volume per stone.
I don't think it will be practical to do that - discussed in the pinned comment.
Sea Kale is actually a beet, which is weird.I had gravel like this in my fish tank. I had your mystery allium back in Texas. It might be Elephant garlic,Allium gigantium or Siberian hardneck garlic.I had all of those volunteer everywhere. Elephant garlic is related to leeks if I remember.
I think you may be mixing up sea kale with sea beet. Both relatives or ancestors of cultivated vegetables but different families; sea kale is in the cabbage/mustard family
I think you should keep the outliers in the samples, as you're skewing you data collection by leaving them out.
Maybe collect your samples with your eyes closed to make it a random sample at the site, and measure the position on your phone so that you can put the sample sizes on a map too?
I did experimental design at uni a good while ago, feel free to ignore my suggestion!
It's not unusual to discard outliers; besides, the thing we're chiefly testing is the local legend about fishermen judging their location from a handful of stones; they would not be looking at outliers.
It's your experiment, only you can define the parameters of it. I look forward to seeing your results.
Belly rubs to your research assistant, Eva. She's better at the hole digging, rather than the sampling, I suspect!,@@AtomicShrimp
maybe you could line the tray with some grid/maths paper to get an easy/approximate measurement of the rocks at a glance? not very elegant but it could save time
Welp altho it's 3:30am EST clearly it is the time to go learn about these pill box structures!
6:41 here in Long Beach Island, New Jersey, we have lots of sea pea! not sure if is the same variety found where you are.
Suggestion: If you want to say something about size, why not use volume? You are by the sea so it would be relatively easy to measure the displacement of x stones in (sea)water.
Use an old measuring cup and fill it to 500ml say you drop in 25 stones and the measuring cup reads 550ml so the displacement is 50ml.
Want be more accurate: you could use syringes of a few sizes and suck out the water and read off their more accurate scales.
@5:54 thought you'd gone a bit 1930's Germany for a second there 😆
You could measure volume, archemedes style, by displacing water. You could back calculate average density because you know the fixed volume of the cup, and therefore you'd know the average mass of the stones
This is discussed in the pinned comment
as sience its a thing its blows my mind learning new things about life
Speaking of interesting sea/beach flora. I came across a sea poppy growing in the shingle of my local beach. I do believe its quite a rarity as iv never seen one before or since. Not that i make an effort to scour every part of that beach. But im familiar enough with it to aknowledge it as an incredibly uncommon find and a nice one to see as im rather a fan of that type of plant. Theres a decent amount of different poppy species around my local area
Would you not save time counting many hundreds of smaller stones further down the beach by swapping the method and counting 100 or 200 stones and then weighing them?
Also, to measure the individual stones, you could measure their density with a displacement can.
Finally, this is the sort of research that would fit perfectly in the adventure theme park I hope to create one day in the future. 'Word of Gravel' It will have all 2 types of gravel: large and small. We wont have any of that dodgy 'sand' muck at World of Gravel. It will be for gravel purists only.
Tip the stones into a know volume, a cup for instance, pour water to fill container of stones, pour the water off the stones into a measuring jug, volume of water in measuring jug minus known volume equals volume of stones. Keep all the water.
Might help the science.
Just read your addenda.
Babe, come quick, Shrimp is weighing Chesil Beach on his kitchen scales!
Maybe instead of measuring dimensions of X number of stones with a ruler, measuring a larger amount in a beaker of water would give you a faster and more accurate result. Displacement of water will give you volume, which is probably better than a length and width of a pebble since they can be so irregular.
Discussed in the pinned comment
This is like a punishment task on Taskmaster! 🤣🤣
Could you find an average mass density of the stones online and calculate volume from the weight to get an idea of the size? Great video!
A tip for the boots, turn the top of your sock over the rim of the boot.
I think the gravel will just work its way inside the sock if I do that
@@AtomicShrimp confirmed
Possible faster method: spread the stones out in a single layer on the tray and photograph them. Upload the photos for people on the Internet to count. Maybe there's somebody skilled in image recognition software who could automate it. I think a uniform contrasting color on the tray should make this easier.
4:08, LOL, Eva confirms my imaginary scenario.
I've never seen a sea pea, but I shall look out for it next time I'm on the south East or south coast. I love the pea family 💚
I shan't eat any. I like my muscly bum haha
Could you do a vid on common and Latin names and why and etymology etc? That would be really fun.
Hypothesis: rocks?
Methodology: look at 'em
Conclusion: rocks!
This comment rocks.
@@LoloWillzi Glad you understand the gravelty of the situation.
The large alium looks like broad-leaved leek to me. I've encountered similar plants well established on common land in the Thames Valley.
That was an incredibly important scientific piece of work with the stones but you didn't have the ultimate professional assistant by way of Eva to oversee proceedings.
You can measure the volume displacement in water……then understanding not only mass but also density😊
Discussed in the pinned comment thread
Trying to remember my survey techniques from.decades ago.
Hmm. I recall photos of roots or canopy and there was a way of working out coverage % ( with a grid for scale).... can't recall details tho.
And I'm sure nowadays a there will be software that can calculate it pretty easily.
I miss being able to walk alone on the beach, but wheelchairs don't like sand and definitely not gravel.
If you can get yourself to Shoreham-by-Sea and the car park by Shoreham Fort, then you will be able to access the shingle beach via a boardwalk. That is the one I personally know of, but there may be others x
Ooh yeah, sound recorder please!
I wonder if your "removing the outliers" might bias the sample since I expect you're only removing the large outliers, not the small ones.
A better sampling might be to just try to scoop the sample with your scoop on one action, and level it off the below the brim of the scoop (see below). Grabbing a handful at a time might bias things, though perhaps not in a meaningful manner.
Perhaps knowing the density of the rocks might be useful, there may be a trend if the more easily eroded parts of the rock have a different density than the tougher parts. This would be easy to measure: once the cup of rocks is weighed, fill it brimful with water (all stones must be below the brim), and measure the volume of water required to do so. From this the total volume of the stones can be calculated and thence their average density.
Bring along a sheet of graph paper, and take a photo of a small sample of the rocks against the graph paper. It would be fairly simple to analyze the images to get dimensional statistics on the rocks, at least in two dimensions. If you know their volume (see above) and what fraction of the total sample has been photographed (weigh the photographed rocks) you can get some idea of the third dimension (which, by the way, in the sample shown, is quite consistent).
Measuring by photo will not be accurate enough
You could put them in water and measure their volumes. Not that I'm fully on-board with this project, but still.
I would love to measure the volume, but I think it probably introduces too much additional time into the measurement process - we're going to have to walk 16km, stopping every 500m for the measurements, and we have to do this in a single day (because you can only get on and off the beach at the ends)
You might try doing an Archimedes style volume measurement with a graduated cylinder and see how much is displaced to measure size!
Michael, this expedition asks for a thorough discussion
It'll be a whole video (maybe more than one depending on whether we complete it in a day)
You know he's serious when he breaks out the rolling tray.
Were the pillboxes made with the local beach stones as aggregate in the concrete?
Good question. It should be possible to tell by just looking - I will check it out next time I go.
When I did a similar exercise at uni, we measured the pebbles in 3 dimensions. (Length, width, thickness)
Perhaps you could do the same, and plot average ratio of L:W:T for each sample location on a triangle graph?
That's what I hope to do - the pebbles are all pretty much shaped like a flattened jellybean, so they have clearly identifiable length, width and thickness
I've never seen anyone count as fast as you.
I wonder if the sound of the surf is noticeably different at either end of the beach?
Could you fill the cup of stones with water after measuring the mass and re weigh it to work out the volume of the stones and then divide by the number of stones?
Would require you to bring a big bottle of water with you but would be quicker than measuring with the callipers.
I've discussed the limitations of volumetric measuring in the pinned comment thread. One thing I would also miss out on is the measurement of proportion. I don't know if the stones might be flatter or longer toward one end or the other -they are all approximately the shape of a flattened jellybean so it might actually be possible to measure length, width and thickness
Those stones are why I never really liked English beaches. One of the few plusses of coming to Australia is the beaches are nice and sandy, generally very soft.
It is really interesting though that the stone size shrinks from one end of the beach to the other, I wouldn't have expected that.
There are plenty of sandy beaches here. I just seldom go there with the camera.
@@AtomicShrimp Interestingly, I just saw you mention exactly that in a comment positivity video. I suspect I just never went to them, or if I did it was before my earliest memories (moved here when I was 4). Even here in Australia some beaches have a coarser grain to the point where it's a bit unpleasent to walk on barefoot. Just lucky enough to live in Queensland where most are soft white sand.
I've always preferred stony beaches to sandy ones, but then I am not often going there to swim
Do you think you might introduce bias by selecting the sites instead of chucking a marker randomly and using that spot? Then using multiple sites in an area to smooth out outliers and anomalies?
The sites are going to be GPS targets that are set in advance. I think when it comes down to the precise collection point, the only difference is the number of outliers on the surface - the main body of the gravel is surprisingly uniform in any given zone
It is hard work to walk along chesil beach, really saps the energy. What are the rules for a plant to be considered native?
Wouldn't it be easier to have a set of sieves with increasing hole sizes? With those you don't just just get two values (grams per stone, average size) but a distribution: x% stones between size a and b, y% stones between size b and c, and so on. I would imagine you get a bell curve, with the peak/mean of that curve moving as you make your way across the beach.
It's going to be a 10 mile slog along a gravel beach. I am not carrying a set of sieves! (also the size gradient is really subtle).