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Friday 7th April 2006 Issue: 41

Well would you believe it?  It’s Easter already and Haywire is hoping to live up to your egg-spectations by bringing you all the latest on eggs and egg-related trivia.  Not to mention some truly awful jokes.  So crack open a choccy egg and tuck in whilst you read all about it.

  1. Five egg-staordinary eggy facts
  2. Up for Grabs – the Aventis Junior Science Prize shortlist.  How do we do it?
  3. Planet Picks – The Egg Box, don’t drop it!
  4. Crash Bang! – How to tell if an egg is raw WITHOUT cracking it
  5. Tummy Ticklers – more egg jokes?  You must be yolking…
1. Five egg-straordinary eggy facts
  1. In the UK, we eat nearly 10 billion eggs a year; that's 26 million every day, which placed end to end would reach from the earth to the moon.
  2. The largest egg ever had five yolks and was 31cm around the long axis.
  3. The heaviest egg weighed 454g - that's six times heavier than a large egg from the shops.
  4. The world's largest omelette was made in Madrid from 5,000 eggs by chef Carlos Fernandez. It weighed 600kg! Phew! Hope everyone was hungry…
  5. The longest throw of a fresh egg - without breaking it - is 98.51 metres. The record was achieved in Texas, USA in 1978.

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2. Gear for Grabs – You’ve got to be in it to win it...

As a special treat for Easter we have the most amazing prize to give away.  Not ONE but SIX fabulous science books and they are all shortlisted for the Aventis Junior Science Prize, the winner of which will be announced on 16 May 2006.

The titles are

100 Science Experiments – Georgina Andrews and Kate Knighton (Usborne Publishing)
Think of a Number – Johnny Ball (Dorling Kindersley)
It’s True! Squids Suck – Nicki Greenberg (Allen and Unwin)
Blame My Brain – Nicola Morgan (Walker Books)
Global Garden – Kate Petty and Jennie Maizels (Eden Project)
Kingfisher Knowledge: Forensics – Richard Platt (Kingfisher Publications)

The final decision on the winning book is now down to the people who matter most –children themselves.  Over one thousand young people across the UK will decide the eventual £10,000 prize winner. 

For the fifth year running, the Aventis Prizes has teamed up with Ecsite-uk, the UK Network of Science Centres and Museums, to run the judging process. Junior Judging Panels will choose a winner from the six shortlisted books and submit their vote.  The book with the most votes will win the prize. 

The Junior Prize judging panel consists of Children’s Laureate 2001 and award winning author, Anne Fine (Chair), the astronomer Carolin Crawford, 2001 Nobel Prize winner Tim Hunt, teacher Anita Kapila and the executive editor of magazine programmes at CBBC Reem Nouss.

The Prizes are managed by the Royal Society, the UK national academy of science and generously supported by the Aventis Foundation, a German charitable trust established by a predecessor of sanofi-aventis, a world leader in pharmaceuticals.

For more information on the Aventis Prizes for Science Books please visit the website at www.aventisprizes.com.

Go here to find out more about the Royal Society

To win this fantastic prize you need to answer the following question: When will the winner of the Aventis Junior Science Prize 2006 be announced?

To enter, send the answer in an email with your name, age and address to: Hay-Wire.Clubhouse@nesta.org.uk with ‘SCIENCE PRIZE’ as the subject. The closing date is 5pm, on Thursday 20th April.

Good luck!

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3. Planet Picks - News from the world of Planet Science...

What could be better at this time of year than a few eggsperiments? Planet Science has just the thing – a whole series of investigations to do at home and all about the trusty egg.  It’s even called The Egg Box! Click here if you want to crack on with them…

And if you’re wondering if they are worth doing – then take a look below for an egg-zample.

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4. Crash Bang! – Exciting experiments for you to try at home…

Tell Tale Eggs

An activity which can be used to impress and amaze your friends and family with just a little bit of showmanship!

It uses the fantastic new science of spinning to let you see right into two identical looking eggs…

What we need:

  • 1 raw egg
  • 1 hard-boiled egg
  • a flat surface

What to do:

1. Show your audience the two eggs (one hardboiled, one raw). Tell them you’ve got your lunch mixed up and you need to work out which is which.

2. Spin the hard-boiled egg. It will spin like a top and if you try to stop it using light finger pressure and then let go, it will have stopped dead.

3. Spin the raw egg. It will have a very unsteady spin and if you try to stop it with your finger and then let go, it will start spinning again.

What’s happening?

The two eggs behave differently simply because their insides are different. A hardboiled egg is solid all the way through and so spins as a solid. All of it stops at the same time when you put your finger on it. Liquids, however, are a whole different kettle of fish (or saucepan of eggs?) and the liquid centre of a raw egg carries on moving even after the solid shell has been stopped, which is why the uncooked egg continues to wobble around…

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5. TUMMY TICKLERS – It’s the way you tell them…

Who wrote Great Eggspectations?
Charles Chickens

What happens if you play table tennis with a bad egg?
First it goes ping, then it goes pong.

Where would you find a chicken with no legs?
Where you left it!!

And if you like those then have a look at the others on http://www.britegg.co.uk/kids05/kids2.html and if you can do better then let them know and you could win an inflatable eggcup. But don’t forget to send your jokes to us too here at : Hay-Wire.Clubhouse@nesta.org.uk We could do with a good laugh!

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Information Overload

Planet Science has gone Hay-Wire and now you have too!

That’s all for this issue. The next issue of Hay-Wire will be with you in two weeks time so until then, why not ask your friends to join the Hay-Wire Club?

They can visit the Clubhouse for more details at:
http://www.planet-science.com/wired/hay-wire/clubhouse

Bye for now!