|
 |
 |
||||
|
|||||
 |
|||||
|
|||||
|
|||||
|
01. NATIONAL SCIENCE WEEK
Can you feel it in your fingers? Can you feel it in your toes? Like love, National Science Week is all around... Throughout the UK, there are events lined up from today until the 21st March, and you are more than cordially invited! The main information site is at: http://www.the-ba.net/nsw - have a look at what's on offer in your region by clicking in the relevant spot on the UK map to be found here: http://www.the-ba.net/the-ba/page.asp?selectPage=707 As you'll see, the subject range is huge, and whether you're into fossils, insects, forensics or ethical debate, there really is something for everyone. Here are just a few highlights to give you an idea of the scale of the thing: * Yorkshire Museums are, Antiques Roadshow style, inviting you to bring along your rocks and minerals for examination by an expert panel who will be able to identify what they are - and who knows maybe even tell you what they're worth... * On Skye, BBC Scotland's favourite meteorologist, Heather "the Weather" Reid will be explaining and demonstrating how technology has revolutionised our ability to make accurate forecasts. * On Thursday night, Lancashire University are holding an open evening and so long as skies are clear, you should be able to see both Saturn and Jupiter. * At the National Space Centre in Leicester - of which more later - there's an expert-studded public debate on Thursday evening called 'Access Mars' at which you're invited to air your views as to whether the UK should continue exploration of other planets in our solar system. * Colour and its uses in both the natural and the manmade world will be explored in a couple of vibrantly luminous evening talks accompanying an exhibition called 'Colour: Art & Science' at the Institute of Physics in London.  |
|||||
|
|||||
| 02. ACTIVITY OF THE WEEK: MELT YOUR OWN ICECAPS This week another demo from Planet Science's Little Book of Experiments. This is a model that enables you to find out whether melting ice is making the sea 'overflow'... You will need: * a drinking glass * ice * a marker pen * a ruler What to do: 1. Fill a glass three-quarters full with water and add ice. Draw a line with your marker pen along the water level and measure the height from the bottom of the glass to the line. Now wait for the ice to melt. 2. Once the ice melts, mark the new water level line and measure the new height from the bottom of the glass to the line. There should be a small drop in water level, as ice (unlike most other things) is actually bigger in its solid form than in its liquid form, and so it shrinks as it melts. 3. To test this out you can put some water into a beaker so that it is one third full. Mark the water level and put into a freezer. When you remove the beaker the level of ice will be higher than the felt tip line. What's going on: The result of this experiment shows that the melting of sea ice has nothing to do with rising sea-levels - but global warming does lead to a rise in sea-level. This is because even though H2O is unusual and expands when it freezes, it expands when it warms up too. The global rise in temperature has meant the water in our seas has got bigger, and so the overall global sea level has risen because of it. Melting of land ice also leads to a rise in sea-level. |
|||||
|
|||||
| 03. MOUSES AT THE READY: NATIONAL SPACE CENTRE Fancy a day out in space? Or as Lynne Truss would say, a day out COMMA in space? Either way, the space on offer is inside the five galleries of the National Space Centre in Leicester. We have five 4-person family passes and if you're in the area and don't fancy one of them that you must be off your planet! The centre is the futuristic home to space exploration artefacts from as far back as the 1950s, but needless to say there's plenty for visitors to lay their hands as well as their eyes on. Explore the inky blackness of space and the heavenly bodies that inhabit it both inside and outside the confines of our solar system; follow the life story of a star; and check out the latest information on those random rocky hazards that could annihilate our planet and spoil the party big time: NEOs - or Near Earth Objects. Once you've whetted your appetite for exploring the final frontier, you can find out whether you're the Right Stuff for such exploits. Find out what life's really like for an astronaut, and try a few challenging tests... You can even have a go at docking the International Space Station, which is not as easy as it looks, but that's rocket science for you... When you've finished in the galleries, you can visit the giant screen for the new 'Mars Show' animated film. Check out the whole centre on its website at: http://www.nssc.co.uk/ And if you want to get in the draw for a free family pass, send an email to anne@planet-science.com with the title I NEED SOME SPACE! and a note of your name and address. The draw will take place at 3pm on Thursday 18th March. |
|||||
|
|||||
| 04. THE HUMAN TISSUE BILL: STUDENT PARTICIPATION The Association for Science Education (ASE) have been in touch to tell you about a current initiative which may be of interest to teachers of KS3 and 4 students... It centres on the Human Tissue Bill. This is currently going through Parliament, as you may know from the controversy currently being stirred up regarding the use of human tissue in medical research. Thanks to support from the Wellcome Trust, the ASE has put together a special UPD8 activity which allows you and your students to take part in the consultation and genuinely feed into the legislative process. Read all about it at: http://www.ase.org.uk/htm/teacher_zone/upd8/ The curriculum links are: KS4 Sc1 [1c,d], KS4 Citizenship, building on KS3 Humans as Organisms Sc2 [2]. NB. The deadline for participation is Monday 22nd March. |
|||||
|
|||||
| 05. THIS WEEK IN SCIENCE HISTORY: HAY FEVER On March 16, 1819, Dr John Bostock gave a talk on something that was bothering him. Every summer he found himself sneezing a lot, and getting itchy eyes and a runny nose. It was the first time that anyone had ever spotted the disorder but he didn't know the cause - he didn't even have a catchy name for it. Today it's known as "hay fever" and this was the first ever description of an allergy. Hay fever is an allergy to pollen. Individual sufferers are allergic to specific types of pollen and so develop their hay fever symptoms at different times of the year, but the cause is always the same. When pollen enters the body of a hay fever sufferer the body over-reacts to it producing antibodies to fight off the invaders, even though the pollen is actually harmless. These antibodies trigger the production of histamine that makes the nose produce more mucus, which would be a clever trick to get rid of the invaders if they were harmful. Extra blood plasma in the area causes the membranes in the nose to swell and triggers sneezing. In general a nasty combination. Most hay fever remedies involve antihistamines. These chemicals block histamine receptors, using up all the spaces so that histamines don't get a chance to latch on. The idea is to stop the symptoms before they have even started. Although histamines may produce allergy symptoms, they aren't all bad - they keep us alert - so antihistamines can make us drowsy. Fortunately newer antihistamines have fewer effects on the brain, hence product claims of 'hay fever relief with no drowsiness'. Unfortunately, however, the very best way to stop hay fever symptoms is to stay inside when the pollen count is high - generally when the weather is at its best! Learn more about hay fever with the BBC allergy guide: http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/allergy/conditions_hayfever.shtml If you want to find out more about the pollen count, how they take it and what it means have a look at this site: http://www.rotherham.gov.uk/graphics/Environment/Pollen+Count/ Want to find out just what the air near you is made of? Make a pollution catcher or collect and identify your own pollen: http://www.hcdoes.org/airquality/Kids/activities.htm http://www.accessexcellence.org/MTC/96PT/Share/fiorella.html |
|||||
|
|||||
| 06. RECOMMENDED WEBSITES OF THE WEEK: TWO COSMIC ADVENTURES In just a couple of clicks you could be peering into the furthest reaches of the universe, literally billions of light years away from us... On Tuesday, the Hubble Space Telescope delivered the deepest of deep space images ever seen, and thus images of the some of the earliest galaxies ever. A gallery of these can be viewed, with descriptions, online at: http://www09.ksc.nasa.gov/mirrors/stsci//hubbledev And if you liked that, you'll love this: a great educational site courtesy of NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab. It's called COOL COSMOS and its idea is to show how the universe - and the Earth - can be explored using infrared and other light sources invisible to the human eye. To help demonstrate how infrared light reveals objects by heat, there's an Infrared Zoo with images of lots of animals you'd recognise in their 'normal' colours. But there's way more than that on offer. There's also a host of teachers' resources, and even a few 5-minute games for kids. And there's the images: loads and loads of gorgeous, colourful photos of the universe, the solar system and everything in between. For a full multimedia effect turn up the sound on your computer... very groovy. Here's the url: http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/ Enjoy your cosmic trip! |
|||||
|
|||||
| 07. AWKWARD QUESTION OF THE WEEK Dastardly, simply dastardly As you may remember, last week's Awkward question went like this: A distraught Lady Alicia Fothergill is at the front of carriage of a train moving at 200 miles per hour. She is facing backwards, and pointing a gun at Sir Hector, her philandering husband, at the other end of the carriage. She fires the gun at Sir Hector, and the bullet travels towards him at 200 miles an hour, in the opposite direction to the way the train is moving. Miss Marple is, by chance, standing on the platform, with her hawk-like eyes, watching all this happen as the train passes by. What does she see - and who does she think is responsible for what happens to Sir Hector? Here's the answer: Because the train and the bullet are travelling in opposite directions at exactly the same speeds, someone standing outside the moving train will see the bullet simply fall from the point from which it was shot, while the gun and Lady Alicia continue to travel at 200 mps along with the train. This is all because of relative motion. The gun and bullet are being held by Lady Alicia who is on the train, so all are initially travelling at 200 miles an hour in the direction that the train is heading. When the bullet is fired, it emerges from the gun at 200 miles an hour in the opposite direction to the train. The motions cancel out and the bullet appears stationary to Miss Marple, who is standing on the platform. Indeed, to Miss Marple - who really does have impressive vision - it looks as though the bullet doesn't move, and that Sir Hector moves towards the bullet! If Sir Hector hadn't carelessly got in the way, Miss Marple would have seen the bullet drop to the ground from where it was fired. If it wasn't for Lady Alicia's intent to shoot Trevor she might get away with calling it suicide, in which Sir Hector threw himself onto the bullet. She could even try blaming the poor train driver for driving him into the bullet. Luckily Miss Marple was a witness to it all, and in the eyes of the law the fact that Lady Alicia pulled the trigger is enough!  And now for this week's question: A 1 tonne (1000kg) sealed lorry is being used to deliver 500kg of canaries. Because he's late for his delivery, the driver takes a shortcut and is faced with a tricky decision. Ahead of him is a rickety bridge with a warning sign: 'No loads over 1100 kg'. Could he make it over the bridge if blasting his horn makes all the birds flap into the air, or should he try a three-point turn on a very narrow road? |
|||||
|
|||||
| 08. FEELING LIMERICKY? Jonathan Forgham is. He says, "I came across this brilliant limerick when researching the genre for my year 4 class. Unfortunately they were unable to appreciate the smartness of it, apart from 5 lines and it rhymes." Same here - but you may do better! Here it is: A mosquito was heard to complain A chemist has poisoned my brain The cause of his sorrow Was paradichloro- triphenyldichloroethane. Got a scientific limerick to rival that one? If so, Jonathan wants to hear from you as he's setting a limerick competition in his school for National Science Week, and he's heard that a lot of newsletter readers are creative geniuses! The eventual winner will appear here in the newsletter, and we'll be rushing out to buy a fantastic prize at some point too. Or Jonathan will - the details haven't quite been finalised yet - ahem!) Here's the email to send all entries to: jayemeff2@hotmail.com. |
|||||
|
|||||
| 09. WINNERS Last week's freebie tickets on offer were to check out the futuristic lightweight design of the Jaguar XJ at Birmingham's Thinktank science centre. And the winners were: Keith Norman of Cheltenham, Robert Houghton of St Columb in Cornwall, Sara Harris of Wolverhampton and Mr A J Wilde of Stafford. Your tickets are on their way to you - have a great day out! |
|||||
|
|||||
| 10. JOKE OF THE WEEK And finally, Adrian Tebbut, a top science adviser from Norfolk has been in touch to spread a smile this week. He says, "I claim no credit, this was told to me (in a meeting) by Mike Newton, a Maths adviser colleague." Here it is: A man goes to see his doctor... Man: "Doctor, I'm having problems with my hearing" Doctor: "What are the symptoms?" Man: "A cartoon family on BBC2" Adrian, get along to a few more meetings and send us anything else you pick up! t That's all for this week, other than to say thanks to everyone who contributed to this week's newsletter. Future contributions are most welcome, and should be sent to: Anne McNaught on anne@planet-science.com. Thanks very much... have a great week! |
|||||
|
|||||
 |
|||||
