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 "A cow is a ruminant, which means it chews its cubs." "Tall trees can break wind for up to 100 metres." "A circle is a round straight line with a hole in the middle." See - you learn something every day! This week's newsletter may not be quite as entertaining as Dale Robinson's school logbook of classroom clangers, but we do have news, freebies, websites and jokes on offer (and a few more clangers too ...) Here we go: 01. CAREERS POSTERS available to download 02. FREE STUFF - progress report 03. Visit the HAYWIRE CLUBHOUSE 04. BLETCHLEY PARK - email error last week 05. Activity of the Week: AN A-MAZE-ING VEGETABLE ... 06. MOUSES AT THE READY: 'THE GOOD SEED GUIDE' 07. RECOMMENDED WEBSITE OF THE WEEK 08. AWKWARD ANSWER 09. New feature: ANYONE FOR AN ANALOGY? 10. JOKES OF THE WEEK |
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01. 'FACES OF MODERN SCIENCE' POSTERS TO DOWNLOAD
'Faces of Modern Science' was a photographic project that was undertaken as part of Science Year two years ago, which resulted in the publication of a set of six posters. Each featured colourful pictures of a range of professionals working in different areas of science, as well as in engineering and maths. The posters were hugely popular at the time, and we still receive loads of requests, so this week we have made the posters available for download from the Planet Science website. You can print off A4 or A2 versions, or send the files to a printer to do it for you. You might even like to laminate them! Here's where you'll find them.  |
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| 02. DELIVERY OF YOUR 'FREE STUFF' If you've ordered free stickers or postcards from the Planet Science Free Stuff page, but if nothing's arrived yet please don't panic. The elves have been a bit overwhelmed with orders, but your stuff will be with you shortly. If you haven't ordered yet then click here for the page to visit: |
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| 03. HAY-WIRE CLUBHOUSE Talking of free stuff, if you know any primary kids that would like to sign up to our junior newsletter Hay-Wire, let them know that we have a free Frisbee specially reserved for the first 500 to register. And and and ... they'll be welcome visitors to the Hay-Wire Clubhouse. Housed in a haystack, what else, the Clubhouse has a secret password, which they'll get by signing up to the Hay-Wire Newsletter. It's a TOP SECRET password - but ok then, we'll whisper it to you just so you can have a look around (don't tell your kids though!) Click here to access the clubhouse, and supply the secret password, which is "Sciwoof", to get past the old Science Dog. You'll then have access to all the clubhouse content. There's a game called 'Needle in a Hay-stack' in which you wield a mighty magnet to pick up needles in ever increasingly tricky mazes, with a complementary fact-file on magnets and magnetism. We've also put together a psychology survey with the help of emotion pshychologist Roger Giner-Sorolla from the Univeristy of Kent, which goes by the fantastic name of 'Apologyology'. The aim is to find out more about how sorry children really are when in a variety of situations (would you ever apologise to an animal even though you knew it couldn't understand you, for example?), and provides advice on the best way to apologise! You don't have to be a child to take part though, so dive in. The data from the survey will be compiled and analysed later and conclusions reached about the nature of regret. So, get to the Clubhouse NOW! (Sorry, was that a bit bossy? Many apologies...) |
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| 04. BLETCHLEY PARK BLOOPER LAST WEEK - PLEASE EMAIL AGAIN And speaking of apologies: the wrong email address was given out last week for the draw for Bletchley Park family passes. Sorry! A crucial hyphen was missing, totally due to human error this end, which may have resulted in you receiving a bounced-back message. The draw has therefore been postponed for a week, and if you'd like to enter again - and please do - the correct address is: planet-science.news@nesta.org.uk |
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| 05. ACTIVITY OF THE WEEK : AN A-MAZE-ING VEGETABLE The humble onion. Best know for making people cry and interfering with your chances of a romantic encounter. But now, here's a chance for our powerfully-ponged pal to impress its critics... You will need: * an onion (ideally already sprouting) * a shoe box * another spare cardboard box * strong scissors What to do: 1. First you need to build a maze for your onion to grow around. Construct it inside your shoebox, with dividers made out of cardboard from the spare box. You need at least two, but you could make more if you like. Cut them the same size as the short end of the shoebox. These are your dividers. 2. Within each divider, cut a 'window' in the cardboard about 3cm square. It will make the maze more interesting if they are in different positions on each divider. 3. Cut an 'exit' door for the onion shoot at one end of the shoebox. 4. Put the onion at the other end of the shoe box, sprouting end facing towards the dividers. 5. Fit the dividers into the box, spacing them out between the onion and the exit. Try to put them in so the onion will have to change direction to get through each hole. Put the lid on and secure it. 6. Try to find a sunny place to leave it (so the sun can shine on the exit) but where it won't be disturbed. 7. Leave it for about 3 weeks and then check to see how it's getting on. What's going on? The sprouts on your onion should have started to find their way out of the maze. They are growing towards the light coming through the exit. Biologists call this 'phototropism'. You might have noticed this already with indoor plants. They grow towards the light, and can get very lopsided unless you turn their pots round occasionally. So how does the onion 'know' where the light is, and how does it grow towards it? The tips of the plant shoots contain a growth hormone called an auxin, which makes the shoot grow faster. But light destroys the auxin, so it only works on the side that doesn't have any light. The side without any light grows longer and the shoot ends up bending towards the light. You might have also noticed that plants without much light grow long and spindly. This is because there is lots of auxin in the plant and it grows fast - but the plant won't be very healthy because it needs light to make food for itself by photosynthesis. More ideas: Try seeing if a sprouting potato can find its way through the maze. Have a race between the potato and the onion to see which shoots grow quicker. You could grow plants from identical seeds, one in the dark and one in the light to compare them. Look especially at the colour of the leaves. (See also our Light Fantastic experiment.) Think of ways to test whether the auxin is only in the tips of the shoots or all along the shoots. - o - O - o - This experiment came from the Little Book of Experiments, courtesy of engineer and imagineer Tim Hunkin. If you'd like to check out the other activities in the LBE, click here. And if you'd like to see a load more of Tim's other inspirational ideas, click to: http://www.hunkinsexperimens.com |
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| 06. MOUSES AT THE READY : FOR FREE AND DISCOUNTED 'GOOD SEED GUIDES' The first hints of autumn have begun to appear, and that means it's time to get ready for SEED GATHERING SUNDAY on 10th October. This is an event that's organised every year by the Tree Council, and the idea is to wrap up and get out into your local park or wood to collect cones, acorns, nuts, fruits and seeds which can then be used to grow the next generation of trees. Anyone can take a seed-gathering walk in the countryside of course, and you don't need to do it on exactly 10th October, but to help you make the most of your tree spree, the Tree Council have produced a free Seed Gathering Sunday information poster, and a book called 'The Good Seed Guide'. You can read more about the event and download a copy of the poster online at: http://www.treecouncil.co.uk (click through on 'Tree Gathering Sunday on the left). There's also information about how to order free copies of the poster by post. As for the 'Good Seed Guide'; this is a beautifully produced book with full colour pictures and pagefuls of information about individual species of trees. It also gives you all the information you'll ever need about how to grow them successfully - including a few tricks of the trade. The only problem you might have is finding suitable places to plant your crop of saplings next year ... but the country needs more trees, so that's a rewarding problem to grapple with! The book normally costs £3.50, including postage and packing, but as a special offer to Planet Science readers, the Tree Council have offered us the knockdown price of £2.00 for a limited period, which is incredibly generous considering it's a charity publication anyway, and they'll still have to post them out to you. If you'd like to order a copy then please send a cheque for £2.00, payable to the Tree Council, to: Planet Science Offer, The Tree Council, 71 Newcomen Street, London SE1 1YT. Offer ends 31st December. But meanwhile, we have a secret stash of five FREE copies to give away in this week's draw. If you'd like to enter, all you have to do is send an email entitled 'I'M NUTS ABOUT TREES' to planet-science.newsa@nesta.org.uk with a note of your name and address. |
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| 07. RECOMMENDED WEBSITES OF THE WEEK We've received an email from Brenda Bentley, a teacher who would appreciate any recommendations for good sciencey sites for her reception class. She and her pupils like the games in our very own PLAYBOX. There must be some other good science sites out there for younger children - but they're certainly hard to find if so... The most interesting one we could find was PRESCHOOL ACTIVITIES at: http://www.reachoutmichigan.org/ Not sure this is exactly what you're looking for Brenda, because it's not a site that your pupils will be able to use themselves. However, they could certainly get a lot from the site via YOU because there are loads and loads and loads of ideas and instructions for hands-on science activities you could try with the class. Activities include: making a glider out of straw and paper, creating modelling dough that's shiny when it sets, baking a Puddle cake, growing your own crystals ... or revisit one of our all-time favourite activities, the Blubber Glove. 105 different activities in fact, so no shortage of choice. Because this is a site that's pulled together pages from several different pages, the style is somewhat inconsistent, but all the same there are loads of great ideas in there. Meanwhile if you know of any other good preschoolers' science sites, please let us know about them by emailing planet-science.news@nesta.org.uk |
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08. LAST WEEK'S AWKWARD ANSWER |
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| 09. ANYONE FOR AN ANALOGY? While we wave au revoir to our Awkward Questions, we're also saying hello to a new feature this week: INSPIRATIONAL ANALOGIES The idea is to gather together a range of really useful scientific analogies that have been tried and tested in the classroom, to the delight of dozens of effortlessly enlightened pupils... Ian Francis, science teacher and erstwhile purveyor of awkward questions and answers, has been scratching his head and come up with the following four examples to set the ball rolling... 1. ENERGY CONSERVATION Principle: Energy cannot be created or destroyed but can be transformed from one form to another. Energy is less useful the more spread out it becomes. Analogy: An analogy for the last bit of this is to imagine a wheelbarrow full of £1 coins. This could be several thousand pounds worth of cash. To have it all in a wheelbarrow would be pretty handy - you could push the barrow to a BMW dealer and swap it for a car, say. Now imagine the same amount of £1 coins, but it's spread over every room in your house and your front and back garden. It's still the same amount of money but it's less useful to you because of the effort you need to put in to collect it all up, and there's the risk of you not being able to find it all. Finally imagine the same money but spread over the whole country. This would be virtually worthless to you, as the chances of finding even a small proportion of it would be slim. 2. RESISTANCE AND TEMPERATURE Principle: The resistance of a wire increases with rising temperature. Analogy: The usual analogy is of people (electrons) moving through a corridor and having to negotiate their way past people standing in the corridor (who represent the atoms/ions of the material making up the wire). If the people in the corridor don't have much energy they're rather sedentary and easy to get past. But give them energy drinks and a pogo stick to play with, and it becomes much more difficult to go down the corridor with these hyperactive people boinging all over the place! 3. MATHS AND THE PHOTOELECTRIC EFFECT Principle: According to Einstein's equation for the photoelectric effect: Energy of incident photon - work function = max kinetic energy of photoelectron. Analogy: The energy of the incident photon is like the money in your pocket at the start of a night out (this example is designed to appeal to sixth formers). The work function energy is analogous to the admission charge at the nightclub. It's an all or nothing thing, even if you're only just one penny short, you will be refused entrance. Different clubs may charge different entrance fees, which is analogous to the differing work functions of different metals. The maximum k.e. bit represents the money left over after paying for entrance, which can then be spent on beer or alcopops or the cab home. 4. CHEMICAL REACTIONS AND TEMPERATURE INCREASES Principle: The rate of a chemical reaction speeds up when temperature increases. Analogy: This is like the reckoning behind speed dating. You ought to (in theory) meet your perfect match sooner if you date more people in a given time. Speed dating is analogous to a reaction mixture at higher temperatures where the particles (people) meet more quickly. A reaction rate at lower temperatures is analogous to sitting at home waiting for your dream partner to phone out of the blue - you're more likely to have a long wait for the 'reaction' to occur. Money, dating, pogo sticks, alcopops, nightclubs, more money ... Ian Francis knows the way to a student's intellectual faculties. Do YOU have an analogy you'd like to share with the rest of the class? If so, send them to planet-science.news@nesta.org.uk |
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| 10. JOKE OF THE WEEK Time for a few more classroom clangers. Dale Robinson, the teacher who sent these in to us, says, "Some were from my own pupils and some from colleagues. We used to keep a book at school called 'The things they say' and would add so many items to it, including things they actually did... which are even funnier!" Are you sitting comfortably? Motzart's aria is a slow, laxative piece of music. Pizzicato means to puke on the violin strings. Queen Victoria was a very long queen. She sat on a thorn for over 60 years. Very slowly, Mark made a rapid recovery. -------------- Meanwhile in response to Nancy Dobson's Einstein challenge ... John Gilyead supplied the following: Einstein's theory of cricket E=MC(C) Einstein's theory of parks E=MC(Arthur) Katy Hewis calculated the following: Einsteins's Theory of Theatre E = MC (Beth) Einstein's Theory of Biscuits E = MC (Vities) ------------- Not only that, she's dug up a really ancient joke for you: An archaeologist was excavating in the Negev Desert in Israel and came upon a casket containing a mummy. After examining it, he called the curator of a prestigious natural history museum. "I've just discovered a 3,000 year-old mummy of a man who died of heart failure!" the excited scientist exclaimed. To which the curator replied, "Bring him in. We'll check it out." A week later, the amazed curator called the archaeologist. "You were right about the mummy's age and cause of death. How in the world did you know?" "Easy. There was a piece of paper in his hand that said, '10,000 Shekels on Goliath'." - o - O - o - That's all for this week, next week Emma Lewis will be back in the hot seat and so if you have any news, ideas, classroom clangers or other contributions, please send them through to her on planet-science.com@nesta.org.uk Have a great week! |
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