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 Guest Editor: Emma Lewis — welcome back! Here I am once again filling the well-travelled shoes of Anne McNaught. What’s that saying about a bad penny always turning up? Anyway, bad pennies aside, here’s what to expect: 01. FIND A PARTNER — Be assured that this is no cheesy dating service! 02. HAY-WIRE REMINDER — Still Frisbees left for new signees... 03. LEARN ABOUT LEARNING? - New NESTA e-bulletin 04. SOMETHING FOR THE LITTLE ONES — pre-school websites and Beaver Scout days. 05. RWW — Kids putting doodling skills to use. 06. MOUSES AT THE READY — Win your very own robot! 07. NEW FEATURE — Cast your eyes over our new feature... 08. ACTIVITY OF THE WEEK: Everyone has a wicked side! 09. ANYONE FOR AN ANALOGY: Keep sending them in. 10. WINNERS WINNERS WINNERS 11. JOKES OF THE WEEK |
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01. CREATIVE ACTION RESEARCH AWARDS
Here's a grant scheme from Creative Partnerships to get creative professionals teamed up with teachers (also very creative of course!) to produce some great projects for the classroom or school lab. They don't specify science teachers on the Web blurb, but Planet Science has enquired on your behalf and they are particularly keen to spread the 'creative partnership' influence into that area. You must register your interest by NEXT Friday (sorry for the short notice, but they only just got in touch!). This enrols you for a general encouragement workshop, and then 100 applications will be selected for funding. Visit this link to find out more: http://www.creative-partnerships.com/events/27150?view=Standard  |
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| 02. FRISBEE NEWSFLASH — For all Hay-Wire signees... Just a quickie to remind you that we still have Frisbees left for those signing up to our Hay-Wire Club for primary school children. All members have to do to join is visit this link and follow the online instructions. |
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| 03. NESTA — Learning E-Bulletin The Learning Team here at NESTA (National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts - AKA home of Planet Science) are launching a new E-Bulletin to give people an overview of what they do and to provide updates on news, recent project awards and current priorities within the Learning Team. Since they informally describe what they do as 'funding cool new stuff in learning' we thought some of you would definitely be interested. The bulletin is quarterly and each issue will include an insight article on a chosen topic with the first being ‘social inclusion’. If you would like to receive the bulletin please e-mail Learningnews@nesta.org.uk . For more information on NESTA in general check out http://www.nesta.org.uk |
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| 04. READER’S REQUEST AND BEAVER SCOUT BADGES A couple of things for the little ones... PRE-SCHOOL WEBSITES You’ll remember last week we had a request from Brenda Bentley who asked did we know of any good sites suitable for her reception class. Mr Harmsworth, Head of Physics at The Leys School, Cambridge, recommends ARRANGE THE PLANETS — a solar system sequencing activity, which is part of the FIRST SCHOOL YEARS website: http://www.firstschoolyears.com/science/general.htm Another website which may be of some use is: http://www.primarygames.com/science.htm Here you’ll find lots of science games to keep your pre-schoolers amused, like GRAVITY. In this game the player has to carefully guide a spacecraft being pulled towards a planet by gravity. And just for fun, try FINGER TWISTER, which uses the traditional Twister rules only this time your Twister mat is the computer screen! BEAVER SCOUT DAYS Still following our ‘young ones’ theme, At-Bristol has been in touch to publicise their series of Beaver Scout Days. Last year At-Bristol ran a series of Cub Scout Scientist Badge Days, Brownie Stargazer Badge Sessions and Guides Go For It Days. Now At-Bristol’s Education Team have designed special workshop activities and trails that fulfil the requirements of the Beaver Scout Experiment Activity Badge. Two sessions will run on 2nd and 3rd October. If you’re a leader of a Beaver Scout colony then find out more details by clicking on this link: http://www.at-bristol.org.uk/About/events.htm#beaver |
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| 05. RECOMMENDED WEBSITE OF THE WEEK — Robodoodle Thanks to Dr Steve Garner for putting a little Robodoodle into our lives... Robodoodle is a unique public drawing event from The Open University, which hopes to encourage children of all ages to make an online sketch of their design for a ‘really useful robot’. The definition of a really useful robot is a robot that could help out at home, school or in the community. The top five robots will all win a prize when the winners are picked in November. The website can be found at: http://robodoodle.open.ac.uk Robodoodle is part of the Big Draw — a festival of drawing which will take place across the UK in November. Once the robot images have been collected then you’ll be able to view them in the gallery. If children are stuck for ideas then a visit to The Open University’s RoboFesta website at: http://robots.open.ac.uk should help, and for more inspiration coming up is this week’s competition... |
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| 06. MOUSES AT THE READY — Win a LogiRobot! This robot doesn’t bark and it certainly won’t make you cups of tea, but what it will do is teach children the principles of control, automation and robotics. The LogiRobot, from LogiBlocs, is a truly unique and multi-talented robot with a mind of its own... In ‘fast mode’ you use the remote control unit to guide the robot, making it move swiftly across the floor, twirling around or bashing into things. You can create cunning booby traps for unsuspecting victims (!), or simply mount the LogiRobot on its docking station and make it lift and drag things, or control an automatic lift. In ‘slow mode’ you allow the robot to move carefully in measured steps, guided automatically by on-board Logibloc sensors. It reacts to light and the objects it encounters so you could even make it find its own way out of a maze! For arty types, you can add the penholder and make it draw fascinating pictures with great symmetry or random designs. Use the two light sensors provided to make the robot seek a light beam or follow a white or black path all by itself. To be in with a chance of winning this fantastic prize, send an email with your details and ‘I’M A LITTLE RO-BOTTY!’ in the subject line to: planet-science.news@nesta.org.uk The draw will take place next Thursday at 5pm. Good luck! Now for something a bit different. We’ve said goodbye to the Seven Wonders series so it’s time to say hello to a new series by Ian Francis that looks at our senses, starting with our sense of sight... |
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| 07. The SENSEsational SENSES: Vision If you were forced to choose, would you rather go without your sense of... a. sight, b. hearing, or c. humour? The eye is your organ of sight, and arguably the most important organ for finding out about the world around us. If you’ve ever played daft question games like the one above, we bet most people wouldn’t choose to go blind. Most animals have some sort of light sensitive organ, but it’s with vertebrates that the eye is most developed. That’s not to say that the compound eyes of invertebrates such as insects and crustaceans aren’t up to the job, just that vertebrate eyes can form an image of great clarity under a variety of conditions, and can see in colour. The eye collects light emitted or reflected by objects. Light enters the transparent tissues at the front of the eye with the pupil controlling how much light enters the eye. The lens focuses the rays onto the light sensitive cells of the retina. The cells contain light-sensitive chemicals, either rhodopsin or one of three kinds of colour pigment. Light causes a change to these molecules, resulting in an electrical impulse that is sent to the brain. Different types of retina cells have different sensitivities. Rod cells are not sensitive to colour, but are sensitive to low levels of light, explaining why colour is hard to perceive in dim light. Cone cells are sensitive to bright light only, but they do detect colour. Different cone cells are sensitive to light corresponding to red, green and blue wavelengths. These are the three primary colours of light (indeed, the only colours a colour TV emits) but from combining these colours all other colours can be made. Nerve fibres attached to the light sensitive cells convey electrical impulses to the brain via the optic nerve. Here, vertebrate eyes inherit a design fault, which suggests that our eyes are the product of stepwise evolution rather than some grand design. The nerve fibres actually lie on the lightward side of the light sensitive cells and so form a partial barrier to the light rays. Had our eyes been designed from scratch, presumably the designer wouldn’t have allowed this design flaw. It’s hard to say. But this niggle aside, blue, brown, green, short-sighted or long-sighted, your eyes are the business! Better to lose your sense of humour instead, and just skip the Planet Science newsletter jokes! (Ahem, excuse me? Wait ‘til I tell Anne!) Here’s some eye-related trivia to share with people of an enquiring disposition… Most birds have three eyelids. Cats’ eyes include a layer called the tapetum — designed to allow the eye to capture more light for seeing in dim conditions. How far would you like to see? The furthest object you can see in the night sky with the naked eye is a galaxy almost 2 million light years away- that’s a distance of almost 19 million million million km! Colour-blindness is a human sex-linked characteristic that affects males more than females. Part of the rhodopsin molecule is derived from vitamin A, so the adage about eating carrots has some scientific basis. Spiders have eight eyes. 20/20 vision means you can see what a ‘normal’ person can see when standing 20 feet away from a chart. 20/19 or less is better than ‘normal (you can see at 20 feet what normal people have to be at 19 feet to see). 20/21 or more is worse than normal. Having two eyes makes it easier to judge depth or distance. Trying to catch a ball thrown towards you is much harder when you have one eye closed. |
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08. ACTIVITY OF THE WEEK: See your wicked side... |
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| 09. ANYONE FOR AN ANALOGY? It’s the second week of our new feature looking for useful scientific analogies that have been tried and tested in the classroom. The first comes from an anonymous reader and it is suitable for KS4 Biology/Respiration. It goes like this: The process of energy transfer as a consequence of respiration being used to convert ADP to ATP can be thought of as re-charging a large number of batteries. As the packets of energy (ATP) are 'used up' the batteries are run down (ATP -> ADP + energy) Thanks for that! Do YOU have an analogy you'd like to share with the rest of the class? If so, please send them to planet-science.news@nesta.org.uk |
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| 10. WINNERS WINNERS WINNERS Two draws have taken place this week. The first draw was for a competition to win a family pass to Bletchley Park. We were generously given four family tickets, which will be making their way to the following winners: John Yates, Burton on Trent, Trefor Jones, Stonehouse, Clare Davis, Cardiff, and Alister Gourlay, Suffolk. The second draw was for five copies of the ‘Good Seed Guide’ from the Tree Council. The winners were: Peter Mizen, Kent, Jane Griffin, Wilts, Chris Woods, Chippenham, Cathy Whalley, Middleton on Sea, and Saeeda Jann, Birmingham |
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| 11. JOKES OF THE WEEK Inspired by Dale Robinson's, Classroom Clangers, Chris Parry sent in this little gem: "Vernon, where's your homework?" Miss Martin said sternly to the little boy while holding out her hand. "My dog ate it," was his solemn response. "Vernon, I've been a teacher for eighteen years. Do you really expect me to believe that?" "It's true, Miss Martin, I swear," insisted the boy. "I had to force him, but he ate it!" Meanwhile, in response to Nancy Dobson’s Einstein Challenge, I could only think of three: Einstein's Theory of Tessellating Patterns E = MC (Escher) Einstein's Theory of Pastoral Farming E = MC (Donald) Einstein's Theory of Motor Racing E = MC (Laren) But Chris Parry came to the rescue with the following: Einstein's theory of raining computers E = MC (intosh) Einstein's theory of bright coloured birds E = MC (aws) Einstein's theory of oily fish E = MC (eral) On that note we really must end the newsletter before we all truly lose our sense of humours! - o - O - o - Anne will be back in charge of the newsletter next week so if you have any contributions or ideas for future editions of the newsletter, please send them to her on: anne.mcnaught@nesta.org.uk Have a great week! |
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