Rough Science - Series 4

Series 4

This series takes place at Darwin Mine, adjacent to Death Valley National Park in California and has six episodes, all involving space exploration. Four scientists from the previous series (Ellen McCallie, Jonathan Hare, Mike Bullivant, and Kathy Sykes) are featured plus a new scientist, Iain Stewart, the show's first geologist. Mike Leahy from the previous series is not featured in this series.

1. "'Rover": Build a rover and purify water.
2. "Communication": Send a communication in a way that didn't rely purely on sound (by altering the vibrations of reflected sunlight, which is then detected by a transistor functioning as a light detector), and make a pen that works in zero gravity.
3. "Spacesuit": Design a cooling system for a spacesuit.
4. "Impact": Measure the size of the meteor that created Barringer Meteor Crater. Iain and Kathy travel to Arizona to see the crater. Mike stays behind, and experiments with impact. Jonathan and Ellen make a telescope using an eyepiece and mirror they find in the chest given to them at the start of the episode (their task was to actually measure the size of a crater on the moon).
5. "Aerial Surveyor": Build a device with a camera that could survey a large area from the air. Find the center of one of the largest earthquakes to hit America that took place back in 1872 in California, and estimate what it measured on the Richter scale. Mike creates a system that filters carbon dioxide, just as the astronauts of Apollo 13 were forced to do when an explosion ruptured an oxygen tank.
6. "Rocket": Design rockets that can launch an egg into the air and return it safely to earth. Three different rockets are attempted by three of the scientists, while the remaining two work on a parachute system.