SCIENCE YEAR NEWSLETTER - ISSUE 82 Week ending Friday, 30th August 2002 • LOST YOUR MARBLES? New online game... • HISTORICAL HEROES – Marie Curie & Jagadis Bose • WALKING WITH DINOSAURS - check out that footprint • MOUSES AT THE READY? Family pass to Woburn Safari Park on offer! • BUBBLE ACTIVITY OF THE WEEK - it's frothy man • SCIENCE LINE QUESTION OF THE WEEK – a it’s a bit hairy • RWW 1 – animated physics • RWW 2 – one for foodies • COMEDY CREATIVITY CHALLENGE • JOKE OF THE WEEK • AOB LOST YOUR MARBLES? No not an insult - but a online special present for anyone who’s been through the gruelling process of sitting exams this summer. We thought you might need something to challenge another bit of your brain – the fun bit! Our new game goes by the name of ... spookily enough ... 'LOST YOUR MARBLES?' and it’s a mouse & spacebar controlled challenge in which you have to chase a marble round a maze... Sounds simple doesn't it? Hmmmmm. Suffice to say no-one in the Science Year office has yet made it beyond the 'Easy' level. But that's only because of a lack of practice, other pressing work commitments etc and not because we're a hopeless bunch of clumsies. Right. >top HISTORICAL HEROES … and another alert to some new content on our website, this time particularly suited to primary age visitors – though we reckon you’ll enjoy it whatever age you are. Marie Curie and Jagadis Bose are the two latest additions to the Primary Science history library, and you can read their illustrated life stories if you click here. The life and achievements of Marie Curie (1866 – 1934) are the better known of course, at least in this country, but this is a great summary of her inspiring career – with plenty of extra pieces of information you may not have known about before. Where do those glow-in-the-dark false teeth fit into the story, for example? Aha … well, you’ll have to read it to find out! As for Jagadis Chandra Bose (1858 – 1937) – what an amazing man, whose botanical investigations and creations put India on the scientific map of the world. He’s perhaps best known for inventing the ‘crescograph’, an instrument that can measure the growth of plants - which is on average 20,000 slower than the speed of a snail heading downtown! These two inspiring figures join Thomas Edison and Galileo Galilei in our hall of fame – and there will be others along soon, so ‘bookmark this page!’ as they say. >top WALKING WITH DINOSAURS Dino-news of the week has to be the ordinary, everyday story of a lady taking her dog for a walk on the beach ... when suddenly she noticed a beautifully preserved dinosaur footprint from the Jurassic period right there on the rocks in front of her. Cathie Booth, a Skye hotelier, was the dinosaur-finder in question and she and her husband subsequently found more footprints in the vicinity ... lots more. Next minute the palaeontologists from the Hunterian Museum at Glasgow University were on the case and the story was all over the papers. If you haven't already, you can read up all about it - and get a look at the spine-tingling three-toed footprint in question - on the BBC News website at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/2210169.stm >top FREE FAMILY PASS TO WOBURN Congratulations to Mark Langford, Debra Hall, Julie Lancashire, and Michelle Duffell who won tickets to Inspire! last week, and to Mrs S J Hunt and family and Mark Turnham who swooped the tickets to Longleat. This week we have on offer a free family pass (2 adults, 2 kids) to Woburn Safari Park in Bedfordshire. Lions, elephants, rhinos, tigers, giraffes and zebras are just a few of the residents waiting to get a look at us funny human visitors and when you’ve finished your Safari Drive, you can float around the pond in a giant swan or get up close and personal with the animals at ‘Animal Encounters’ and ‘Monkey Business’ areas… How to enter? Quick quick quick – send an email NOW to david.tasker@scienceyear.com with I’M WILD ABOUT WOBURN in the subject field. PS want to check out Woburn online? Go to http://www.woburnsafari.co.uk . >top BUBBLE ACTIVITY OF THE WEEK Bubbles. They're a perennial summertime favourite and luckily there's no shortage of fun stuff to do with them... Here's an activity that's quick and easy and demonstrates a bit about the lifestyle of our rainbow-coloured friends... What to do: Take three (clean) glasses. Smear the inside of one with a little cooking oil, and add a little sugar to another glass, leaving the third one clean. Pour some (fizzy) lemonade into each one. What happens to the bubbles in the lemonade? What's going on sciencewise: The bubbles in fizzy drinks are carbon dioxide that's forced to dissolve into the drink under pressure. When the pressure is released (by you opening the top of a fizzy drink can or bottle) the CO2 turns back into a gas and forms bubbles (just as when you boil a pan of water bubbles of gas are formed inside the heated liquid). By smearing oil or adding sugar to your glasses you are either helping or stopping these bubbles from forming. Which one is which? Hmmmmm - enjoy! >top SCIENCE LINE QUESTION OF THE WEEK Is it just me or is it dark in here? This week's question from the Science Line files tackles the question of hirsuitness and summertime growth. "Why does hair grow faster in summer than in winter and what about the seasonal change is responsible i.e. the reduction in daylight or temperature?" ... any guesses? Place your bets please... And check out the answer at: http://www.sciencenet.org.uk/database/Biology/0206/b01039d.html As ever, the staff at Science Line are standing by ready to field YOUR science-related questions. And why not take advantage, it's a. FREE and b. brilliant. They have a website and a freephone number, and either way you can get in touch with them, tell them the question, and they'll get back to you with an answer as soon as they can. The phone number is 0808 800 4000 (open 1pm - 7pm weekdays) and the website is http://www.sciencenet.org.uk. >top RECOMMENDED WEBSITE OF THE WEEK 1 Get PHYSICAL with this brilliant area of the Institute of Physics' website. It's a fully animated tour around a street, with a factory, school, office, house and even a greenhouse and a washing line... You can 'walk' around everywhere with your cursor, zoom in and out, enter buildings and check out the physics that is all around us ... from the remote control at home, to the crash-test in the car factory... The graphics are slick, and information boxes pop up whenever you need them. There are also semi-hidden fun features for you to find, eg. you can turn day into night! Whether you think you're a physics fan or not, we reckon you'll enjoy this one. Here's the address: http://www.physics.org/life >top RECOMMENDED WEBSITE OF THE WEEK 2 You might be fit, but are you FOODFIT?! This is a brilliant site which will help you to assess your dietary habits good and bad, give you advice on how you might like to make changes (only if changes are needed, of course, who knows you might be perfect as you are!) There are some nifty calculators for how many calories you use up exercising, and even a good foody shopping list for you to click and print off to remind you not to stray into the old salt/sugar/fat aisle at the supermarket. It’s "almost too much fun to be good for you!" according to our in-house web reviewer! Here’s the url: http://www.foodfit.com/About/about.asp >top TIME FOR SOME COMEDY CREATIVITY... Ever been trapped in a car with your loved ones, and realised you'd forgotten to download the Science Year PARENTS PACK to keep everyone occupied with activities and quizzes? Well, our own in-house Dr Comedy, Katie Walsh (finalist, Open Mic Awards at Edinburgh Fringe just last week - respect respect) has a game for you... It's called 'I'm In Business'. And it's great fun, plus Dr Comedy believes it to be an excellent exercise for practicing what they call in the biz, "thinking of a good punch line then having to come up with the set up". What's it got to do with science? Well, it's a formula, innit? OK, here we go... The joke-formula goes thus : Person with idea for joke: "I'm in business!" Everyone else in unison: "What kind of business?" Person with idea for joke: "The small metal ball business!" (Interchangable set up line line, don't give your punch line away by saying 'the ball bearing business' though.) Everyone else in unison: "How's business?" Person with idea for joke: "Oh, you know, bearing up!" Another example, then you're on your own: Person with idea for joke: "I'm in business!" Everyone else in unison: "What kind of business?" Person with idea for joke: "Making spatulas" Everyone else in unison: "How's business?" Person with idea for joke: "Scraping by!" Have a go, and if you come up with a good science-related one, we will put your name into the hat and you could win a groovy File-o-fax. All entries should be sent to: katie.walsh@scienceyear.com Oh! And if you've not downloaded the Parents Pack yet, what are you waiting for? Click here! >top JOKE OF THE WEEK Q. 'What do you call a sleeping prehistoric animal?' A. 'A dinosnore!' WHAT?? I suspect Dr Comedy will not approve of that one... So here are two snippets that DID tickle her - on the subject of another historical hero, one true, one just for fun: Albert Einstein (1879-1955), who fancied himself as a violinist, was rehearsing a Haydn string quartet. When he failed for the fourth time to get his entry in the second movement, the cellist looked up and said, "The problem with you, Albert, is that you simply can't count." and finally... "The probability of them visiting is directly proportioned to how much you feel like being *left alone*"... (Einstein's Theory of Relatives) >top AOB That's all for this week, but please send any contributions for next week to anne.mcnaught@scienceyear.com Bye for now and have a great week! >top