Charlie Coghlan on Physics

At GSCE Charlie studied separate sciences and when it came to A-Levels he didn’t want to have to choose between arts and sciences, so he took his favourite subjects History and Physics, Maths to facilitate the Physics and Religious Studies because he liked the ethical discussions. Had he been at Bradfield today he says that the IB would have been the perfect solution for him, easily accommodating this breadth of topic.

Following school Charlie had a Gap Year in Guangzhou sponsored by Rolls Royce who had a contract with China Southern Airlines; his role was to teach English to the ground staff and air traffic controllers but inevitably due to the environment there was an engineering connection that fed his interest and was also a good insight into working abroad.

Keen to stay broad in his studies Charlie chose General Engineering in his first year at the University of Edinburgh. A ‘KB kid’ with lectures split between the main university campus in St George’s Square and ‘Kings Buildings’ a 20-odd minute walk away, Charlie grins when remembering the ‘KB walk’ adopted by the scientists striding out to make their lectures on time. In addition to the broad nature of the course, Edinburgh also offered additional side-courses to first-year pupils. Charlie opted for ‘Science and Society’ and reflects that although communication in science is better than it used to be there is still a long way to go The logical, evidenced and modest approach espoused by scientists is all too readily dismissed and overlooked by those favouring a simply explained solution delivered with charisma and confidence. He loved his time at Edinburgh, appreciating the non-campus university lifestyle as well as his specialisation in Mechanical Engineering.

Upon leaving university Charlie joined BP on the commercial rather than technical side, the enviable problem-solving skill set offered by Engineering appreciated by employers in both its direct and indirect application. Ergo he is keen to dispel the myth that to be in business you need to have studied business. Indeed, 21% of FTSE100 CEOs have an Engineering background.

Charlie saw that BP didn’t necessarily want people with very fixed ideas about how things should be done, they were interested in people with broad skills and a problem-solving mindset that they can apply to the context with which they are working.

In his first job, Charlie was the liaison between the Commercial and Operating Teams on a Gas and Power Project. The Commercial team had a model to predict the value held in the different stages of converting gas into electricity. Unfortunately, the commercial and technical teams had difficulty understanding each other’s worlds. So there was the potential for making poor decisions that would hurt both sides. Although he wasn’t an engineer on the project, he used his understanding of the engineering aspects to help the commercial team build a more realistic integrated model to better represent the value proposition and also the challenges involved with the project.  This ability to ‘translate’ between the commercial and the technical was in fact a key skillset required during his ten years at BP where he travelled widely undertaking projects in the US, Turkey, Azerbaijan and Georgia.

Charlie left BP to join Sindicatum, a company set up to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He joined the oil and gas team, developing projects to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the oil industry by finding a use for the gas bi-product otherwise burnt off as ‘flares’, associated with poor air quality, acid rain pollution and significant greenhouse gas emissions. His work included early carbon finance structures to help fund the necessary transitions. Unfortunately, this is only one of many challenges faced by these countries which frustrated progress but ultimately it was an interesting space to work in.

Charlie then moved out to Bahrain in the Middle East and transitioned to consultancy work, this time on energy efficiency, mainly in Saudi Arabia, and developing waste-to-energy projects at landfills in Indonesia to take waste, divert it from landfills and convert it to energy. From there he transferred to a sister company working on weather modification – rain seeding. Following the breakdown of the relationship between the shareholders and the management team, Charlie was asked to step up from running the technical team to running the business. He admits that it was a neat idea, theoretically possible, but after many attempts, they couldn’t make the technology work in practice. A possibly lucrative opportunity; had it succeeded Charlie says that he would be on a yacht in the Mediterranean rather than being a Physics teacher, but such is life.

Given the breadth of his career he is an advocate of the wider application of Physics, citing that even when he returned to ‘engineering’, he reflected that it was in fact much more about applied physics and the skills it brings.

It is increasingly the case that Physics can be used to explain concepts traditionally viewed as the domain of other sciences – for example Biology and Quantum Mechanics have evolved into quantum biology to explain photosynthesis and Biology and Engineering to explain biomimicry.

Careful to caveat his admiration of Elon Musk, Charlie appreciates his pure vision to take on projects if the physics behind them is sound which is seeing him develop technology to a point where the unthinkable becomes possible, giving advances in electric vehicles and space travel as examples.

Whilst Physics might be emerging as the single source of truth and opportunity Charlie wouldn’t sugar-coat the realities of taking Physics beyond GCSE.  Concepts can often be explained in a couple of ways, the intuitive and the mathematical, for example simple harmonic motion. You can predict and explain the activity through observation, prediction and testing or you can take a mathematical perspective and prove it through Mathematics. The intuitive method will get you to a point, however for tasks which cannot yet be achieved in practice this is where the mathematical proof comes into its own. ‘Physics is a hard subject, to be good at it you need to be numerate and happy to grapple with concepts that are often hard to grasp’ but as explained, the rewards for taking on the challenge are undeniable.

Collaboration is of utmost importance in science. For physicists struggling at Bradfield there’s always the opportunity to have a booster session or catch a member of staff during prep and out in the workplace, the scientific community is far closer-knit than it used to be.