PLANET SCIENCE NEWSLETTER - ISSUE 02 Week ending Friday, 20th September 2002 Why not sign up to our weekly email newsletter. From Tom Jones to cryogenics, and from measuring the diameter of the Earth to the safe disposal of nuclear waste, this week's edition of the newsletter is not so much a sleeky-themed affair as a snapshot of the concerns of 21st Century life... Here's the running order: • NON-SCIENCE TEACHERS WANTED (bribery required? Oh ok then!) • ACTIVITY OF THE WEEK - Tuesday's Shadow Showdown • MOUSES AT THE READY? Free passes to the Magna Centre • GM FARM DEBATE - have your say • LIFE AFTER DEATH? Many are cold but few are frozen... • NEWS OF THE WORLD • RWW: Pieces of Science • COMEDY CREATIVITY - winner revealed • THREE OF THE BEST • AOB NON-SCIENCE TEACHERS WANTED If you're a secondary school teacher whose main subject isn't science, we'd love your expert assistance with one particular section of the Planet Science teaching resources. 'Science Where You Least Expect It' is the name of the series of teaching resources produced by 4 Science to explore science outside the science curriculum. The science in question pops up in wide range of subjects - eg. Archaeology, Art, Business Studies, Drama, English, Geography, History, Media Studies, and Travel & Tourism. A host of imaginative science-based projects for students have been created, all with groovy titles such as: 'Did Einstein Wear Brylcream?', 'Good To Talk', 'Santa and the Scientists' and 'Sex Sells'. We're now are looking for teachers from a range of non science subjects to give us a quick bit of feedback on these resources. If you'd like to help, or know someone who can, please email Chloe Sheppard on chloe@planet-science.com . As an extra incentive, anyone who helps out with this will be sent a £25 CD voucher or book token... >top ACTIVITY OF THE WEEK Dateline: noon TUESDAY 23rd September - that's THIS Tuesday coming. Meanwhile, if you're a teacher or school student, you are cordially invited to take part in an international experiment that aims to work out empirically How Big The World Is. 'Montage Singapore' is the organisation running 'The Shortest Shadow Project' and they're looking for students from schools in the UK, New Zealand and Australia to take a measurement on 23 September 2002 at precisely high noon, local time. This will provide data which will help to calculate the circumference of the earth using a method that was first used by the Eratosthenes back in Ancient Greece... Click here for more details on the project's objectives and instructions on exactly what to do. And click through to http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk for more information about Eratosthenes and his amazing accurate ancient astro-measurements! Oooh - and when you've done all that, make sure you join in our Planet Science Water Down the Plughole Experiment! >top MAGNA CENTRE GIVEAWAY If you're in the South Yorkshire area and you're needing just a little bit more adventure in your life ... get ready to email us NOW! We have 3 family passes for the Magna Centre near Rotherham - the UK's first 'Science Adventure Centre'. If you've not heard of the Magna Centre (well, it's always possible) it's an amazing cutting-edge-museum / hands-on / arts&science / playground sort of an activity pleasuredome, created within the giant shell of a former steelworks. There are indoor areas themed around the subjects Earth, Air, Fire and Water, plus two ongoing shows and an outdoor adventure park. The activities range from the creation and melting of crystal patterns (v artistic as well as scientific) to 'Living Robots', a fascinating real-time experiment into artificial evolution developed by the Robot Wars robo-guru Professor Noel Sharkey... There's way too much to mention in detail - plus don't want to hold you up from emailing asap if you want to be one of the first three to snaffle a free ticket. But if you want more details on what they've got, where they are and when to visit, click to http://www.magnatrust.org.uk And if you just want a free family ticket, send an email to david@planet-science.com right now with I WANT SOME MAGNA MAGIC! in the subject field. NB a family pass = 2 adults + up to 3 kids >top GM FARM-SCALE TESTING - HAVE YOUR SAY The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) have been in touch to alert us to a debate you are more than welcome to participate in ... The subject is 'UK farm-scale trials: why are we having them?', and the debate is taking place online and began a few days ago. To initiate the debate, five experts with contrasting views each contributed a written feature, which you can peruse on the website, and now the message boards are open for the rest of us to have our say. The website can be found here: http://www.spiked-online.com/ >top THE PRIZE OF A LIFETIME It may be the scientific publicity stunt of the year, or it may afford one lucky individual the chance of (physical) life after death... Either way you probably won't be hearing it first here - but we couldn't overlook what will doubtless a hot topic in many a speculative discussion over the next few days... Here's the scoop: 'New Scientist' magazine are offering one lucky reader the chance, as they put it, to "win another life" by providing a prize of cryonics treatment. "In essence," they claim, "providing for a second chance at life rather than the inevitability of death." You might want to read that sentence again! The winner will hopefully have to wait for a good long while before they receive their prize, but when they do, here's what will happen (cut and pasted straight from their press release to avoid any transmission errors...) "When the winner of the New Scientist promotion is pronounced legally dead, he or she will be prepared and cooled to a temperature where physical decay of the body stops. The person will then be suspended in liquid nitrogen, in a state known as cryonic preservation. When and if medical technology allows, he or she will then be healed and revived and awoken to extended life in youthful good health." Ridiculous? Obscene? Or absolutely franken-tastic?? Well, if you feel you'd like to give it a bash, all you need to do is collect three tokens from this week's and the next four issues of the magazine. Then complete the entry form and send it off. (But make sure to adopt superb lifestyle and healthy eating habits as an urgent precaution - you don't want to wake up in the 24th century and realise you look like an Industrial Revolution pit pony in comparison to the others...) Seriously though, the New Scientist staff know this is both ethically controversial and scientifically unproven, but their thinking is that it's a. a great way to boost readership and b. good for getting people talking about science. So look out for it. (And by the way, if you do win, you can choose instead to take a week's holiday in Hawaii and a visit to the Mauna Kea Observatory. Which despite what Professor Steve Jones says, may well be better than being dead!) >top SCIENCE LINE'S NEWS OF THE WORLD... ... NUCLEAR WASTE DISPOSAL This week, the news topic that has gone under Science Line's microscope is the question of (safe?) nuclear fuel disposal. If this is one of those topics that you've always read about but never fully understood, click through to the following page of their site ... it was specially prepared for you by the Science Line team fresh today: http://www.sciencenet.org.uk/slup/CuttingEdge/Sept02/ * * * * * * As ever, Science Line are standing by to answer any science-questions you may have and it's a totally free service. So give them a ring or post a question on their site. The phone number is 0808 800 4000 (open 1pm - 7pm weekdays) and the website is http://www.sciencenet.org.uk. >top RWW: PIECES OF SCIENCE You've heard of Six Easy Pieces ... well here are 16 Easy Pieces. The pieces in question are classic objects that relate to the world of science and technology but have bigtime everyday relevance too, or did in the past anyway. The site's aimed at teachers of upper primary age pupils (ish) and is attractive and easy to use. The home page takes you right into the information - click on the pictures to go through to the content pages. Each object has been meticulously researched and the information specially compiled as part of an Anglo-American educational venture linking the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia and the Science Museum in London. Check it out at: http://www.sln.org/pieces/ >top 99 JOKES WALK INTO A NEWSLETTER Well you can't just do WORK all the time can you? Many thanks to everyone who had a go at the humourous headscratcher assigned by Dr Comedy* last week. As previously, the standard was extremely high - and much appreciated by the Planet Science office, needless to say. The brief was to use the time-honoured formula known as '99 cigarettes walk into a pub' and fashion a version that's both scientific and genuinely funny. (Cigarettes and pubs being purely optional elements, the point being that the leader of the 99 has to say something to the barman - or other representative of the establishment - to which the barman or OROFE can reply with a hilarious punchline.) OK: Are you ready? Here comes the runner-up: - 99 gases walk into a pub and the leader of the gases asks for a pint of beer. The barman says "Sorry, I'm not serving you in that state." That was composed by newsletter regular, Katy Hewis. And in a shock result, the overall winner, was... ALSO Katy Hewis. Stand well back: - 99 brains walk into a pub and the leader of the brains asks for a pint of beer. The barman says "Sorry, I'm not serving you. Anyone can see you're out of your heads." In awarding this week's funky filofax, Dr Comedy comments, "This is an excellent application of the formula. It involves a classic scientific concept, the brain, and it works back perfectly from the punchline, which is a brilliantly suitable pub cliché." Which just proves that hanging about in pubs a lot can seriously increase your chance of winning prizes... Though only if you're over 18, naturally. Commendations also to Max F, Dale Robinson and Philip Whitehead for their contributions. And watch out - another challenge will be coming your way next week. * Dr Comedy is the rather academic-but-enthusiastic alterego of Katie Walsh, our in-house comedienne and Open Mic finalist. And she knows her humour from her humerus alright... so no arguments! >top JOKES OF THE WEEK (not counting the 99 ones above) >top A.O.B. Hope you've enjoyed this week's round-up and feel you've got plenty of good stuff to be getting on with for the next few days... As ever, if you've got something you'd like to contribute to a forthcoming edition of the newsletter, drop a line to Anne McNaught on anne@planet-science.com. Meanwhile have a top week. And remember what TC said: you look great, the world's your oyster, go for it!