PLANET SCIENCE NEWSLETTER - ISSUE 21 Stardate: Friday 14th February 2003 Did you know you can choose to receive this weekly news update free by email? sign up here Valentine's Day is here and you can print this newsletter off and count is as a card from your ardent admirers at Planet Science. Coming up: heart-shaped grooviness, freebies galore and the scientific truth behind those Zeta-Douglas assertions... Lovely... 01. How deep is your (knowledge of) love? NEW QUIZ 02. OUTREACH update 03. WHAT A LUVLY GEYSER - activity of the week 04. FREE PLACES on gene technology course 05. SCIENCE BEHIND THE NEWS: Does my bum look big in this? 06. RECOMMENDED WEBSITE OF THE WEEK 07. HAIKU CHALLENGE 08. JOKE OF THE WEEK O1. PLANET SCIENCE LURVE QUIZ Jacqueline shook back her lustrous strawberry blond hair, and excitedly scrolled down the page on the computer in front of her. "I don't believe it!" she gasped, "here's my chance to win a retro neon sign in the shape of a love-heart with an arrow shot through it! What a wonderful surprise present that would make for..." She sighed, lost in a daydream about last night's unexpected encounter with Dr Evan Foster, the newly-appointed Head of Department. "Ms Donnelly - " She jumped, startled by the manly presence that had suddenly appeared behind her. She spun nimbly round on her rotating chair. It was him. He had a stern look on his ruggedly handsome face, and he was holding a computer print-off. Surely he wasn't going to criticise her painstaking analysis of those protein samples? "Ms Donnelly," he repeated. "...yes?" she faltered. "I feel we will both regret it deeply if we do not enter the Planet Science Love Quiz... Here, I've printed it off. I was hoping we could discuss it over a Hob Nob?" Oh sigh... Romance has landed on Planet Science for one week only with our new Lurve Quiz. Enter the world of square-jawed heroes and doe-eyed heroines and complete our Blankety-Blank style story to win, as Jacqueline already mentioned, a groovy red neon love-heart... It's kitsch, and it's quite a catch! Click through to romance here. It's like nothing you've ever known before... Back to top 02. AND SO TO 'OUTREACH' OF A DIFFERENT SORT Just a reminder to anyone interested in applying for Planet Science funding for outreach initiatives, you can now find all information, including details of potential collaborators in your area, on our website here. Back to top 03. ACTIVITY OF THE WEEK This week: Create your own geyser. Stand well back... What you'll need: • a plastic bottle of fizzy drink • a drawing pin • a small sweet like a jelly bean What to do: • First, make sure you're outside and that there's no-one else within a 2m radius. Otherwise, they could get a bit wet... • Take the top off the bottle of fizzy drink. • Make a hole in the top with the drawing pin. • Drop your sweet into the drink and quickly screw the top back on. >>> And stand by for action! What's happenning? So what made the drink behave like that? Exactly the same stuff that makes it fizzy in the first place. Fizzy drinks have carbon dioxide (CO2) forced into them under pressure before they are bottled. When you put a sweet into the bottle CO2 gas bubbles build up on the surface of the sweet. As more and more bubbles build up around the sweet, the pressure inside the bottle goes up and up until it is so high that the gas and the liquid force themselves out of the hole in the top. This activity was sent in by top teacher Nancy Bilderbeck and her class at South Hampstead Junior School, and is one of the many crowd-pleasing demonstrations and experiments in our online Little Book of Experiments. Want to see the others? Check them out here. Back to top 04. GENE TECHNOLOGY - PLACES GOING FREE Bio-Rad and the Institute of Biology have been in touch with a lovely offer for all teachers and technicians... They say: "Following the success of last year's courses, we are again collaborating with science centres and museums across the UK to offer a NEW one day Gene Technology course. The theme celebrates the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the DNA double helix. And ALL participants will take away a FREE pGLO Bacterial Transformation kit" (The latter being a kit with which students can use to transform bacteria into glow-in-the-dark bugs in a dramatic and safe practical using the GFP gene from a bioluminescent jellyfish!) The course is being run in Belfast, Liverpool, Birmingham, Cornwall, Glasgow, Dundee, Edinburgh, Bristol, Surrey, Cardiff, Newcastle and London on various dates from March to July, and will normally cost £75 per place, including all refreshments, lunch and resource materials. But Planet Science has 10 free places on offer - and you could be a lucky winner... If you're interested, contact the organisers for further information about the courses, and your name will be put in the hat for one of the free places. The draw will be made on Monday 3rd March. Just email dominic_delaney@bio-rad.com at Bio-Rad or Georgina Day, at the IOB on g.day@iob.org. Remember to state your: • Name • School address • Phone number • Email address. Good luck! Back to top 05. SCIENCE BEHIND THE NEWS They say the camera never lies, but as we all know, that's not always the case. This week Science Line have been investigating why some photos don't only catch you looking moronic and sporting a double-chin you weren't aware of, but may also make you look a lot bigger too. Bigger enough perhaps to sue 'Hello' magazine for $500,000? Hmmmmmm... Here's where you'll find the scientific lowdown: http://www.sciencenet.org.uk/slup/CuttingEdge/Feb03/ camera.html Happy snapping! Back to top 06. RECOMMENDED WEBSITE OF THE WEEK This week a cyber-discovery that has somehow eluded us at Planet Science so far: The joy of... Beakman http://www.beakman.com Beakman is/was a tv populariser of science in the US for several years, and now exists in the form of a syndicated cartoon form in many newspapers. And a very entertaining and informative site called 'YOU CAN WITH BEAKMAN AND JAX'. The site loads up in front of a screen showing a giant advert, which is slightly confusing, but don't let that put you off. The content is brilliant, and the text is hilarious - guaranteed to appeal to all kids and all adults who are kids-at-heart. Not only are there games, quizzes, interactive bits & pieces and a hirogylph-creator which will enable you to write your name in Pharoh-ese... but there also fully-explained answers to some very probing questions he's been asked, such as: "Why does my hair get all curly when the humidity goes up?" and "Why does the TV go crazy when the mixer is on?" For added value there are instructions for follow-up activities on each topic. But these aren’t your average follow-up activities. For example, after answering the question 'Why do cats cough up furballs?', he goes on to describe how you can make your OWN furball (with cat-hair, that is!). Then says "Take it to school for show and tell. You can dip it in warm water to freshen it up." The 'refreshment' aspect of furballs leading nicely into a description of mucus, and further link to explore the wonderful world of stomach-mucus. Have a lovely Valentine's Evening! Back to top 07. HAIKU CHALLENGE Next week guest editor Joanna Edwards will be back with her fingers on the hot-keys, and as you’ll remember, she has thrown down a Haiku Challenge to all readers. She says: ‘All you budding poets out there, listen up! The door of opportunity is still ajar for you to win a fab Intel Play Digital Microscope. There’s one more week to go, and the winners will be announced in as grand a style as we can muster in next week’s newsletter. ‘Thanks for all the wonderful haikus we’ve had so far, they’ve really kept us entertained. Just to encourage you, here’s a couple we’ve come up with which should make you smile!’ Haikus have been great But I’m feeling greedy, so; Show me the haikus! And The haikus we have Just whetted our appetites More would be blinding Send all entries to: jo@planet-science.com Back to top 08. JOKE OF THE WEEK When the office printer's type began to grow faint, the office manager called a local repair shop where a friendly man informed him that the printer probably needed only to be cleaned. "It costs £50 if we clean it for you," he says, "so you might want to read the printer's manual and do the job yourself..." Pleasantly surprised by the repair man's candor, the office manager asks, "Does your boss know that you discourage business?" "Actually it's my boss's idea," the repair man replies, "We usually make more money on repairs if we let people try to fix things themselves first." Back to top 09. AOB As ever, the newsletter will be back next week, so in the meantime, please send through any news, jokes, web recommendations or other bits and pieces you’d like to share with the class to Anne McNaught on anne@planet-science.com Back to top