Stardate Friday 27th January 2006 Issue 166

There’s been a flurry of info that might be of interest (financially or otherwise) this week, so we’ve made a newsletter notice board out of them, mind yourself on the drawing pins there!

Howdy, £3000 partner. If you have a great idea for a science project in school, and you’d like £3000 to make it happen, this could be for you. The Royal Society’s Partnership Grants scheme makes grants of up to £3000 and they are available for teachers and scientists or engineers to work together on creative science investigations involving 5–18 year olds.  Over the last 4 years the scheme has given over 40,000 pupils and their teachers the opportunity to work on stimulating and inspiring projects in partnership with a scientist/engineer.  These partnerships have created some fantastic projects, for more information, case studies of previous projects, and an application pack, contact Bonnie Laverock on 020 7451 2561, or go to www.royalsoc.ac.uk/partnership.  Be quick though, the deadline of 10 February 2006 is fast approaching. There is such a thing as a free lunch! The BBC is organising a free creative ICT practice exchange for science. 15 participants get the opportunity to meet, share and exchange creative ICT practice in science with other teachers in your field.  This session will be led by Nick Dixon, Lead Teacher in the Use of ICT and Neil Dixon, recognised by Becta in the 2005 ICT in Practice Awards. Be inspired by some of their demonstrations of the fantastic stuff they’ve been getting up to in the classroom. Saturday 4th February, 11am - 2.30pm, a sandwich lunch is provided free. Interested? All sessions take place at BBC Broadcasting House, Portland Place, London W1A 1AA To book telephone: 020 7765 5950 or e-mail: information21cc@bbc.co.uk

Institute of Physics' Public Engagement Grant Scheme 2006 Are you a great communicator?  Do you have a fantastic idea for making physics accessible?  Can you inspire other people with your enthusiasm?  Do you need some support to make your outreach activity happen? (Man, they ask a lot of questions those IoP people!) If you answered yes to all that, then why not apply for a Public Engagement Grant from the Institute of Physics?  The grants are worth up to £1000 and aim to support individuals organising physics-based outreach activities throughout 2006. Application forms and guidelines for the grant scheme are available Online. Closing date: 10 March 2006.http://physics.iop.org/IOP/grants.html.  Or email physics.society@iop.org Because you’re worth it! This might be for you, or someone you studied with? UKRC is pleased to announce that applications are now invited for the new L'Oreal UK / UKRC Bursaries for women returning to scientific research careers. Three bursaries of £10,000 each are available. For more information contact Rebecca Marmot on Tel: 0208 762 4637 or email: fwisbursaries@uk.loreal.com or see further details on UKRC website. Planet Science Workshop, Sheffield. There are still places left for any teachers or science co-ordinators wishing to attend the Planet Science website workshop at the Yorkshire and Humber Science Learning Centre as mentioned in last weeks newsletter. It’d be lovely to see you there! Click here for details Is your school thinking of applying for Science Specialist status? Or Sport, Engineering or Technology ? It’s probably *quite* a lot of paperwork huh? Well here’s some news that might help spur you onwards. ScienceScope, who specialise in datalogging, have entered into an agreement with the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust (SSAT) whereby they will make their software available for free to 125 successful schools in the March 2006 bidding round. The offer, which includes upgrades, support and training, then stands for four years of your specialist status. More info available here www.sciencescope.co.uk

That was all quite sensible info wasn’t it? Now here’s something really really silly….

Many thanks to Hay-Wire and Wired-Up writer Katy Hewis for unearthing this for last week’s Hay-Wire. What? You know younger teens and under 10s that aren’t signed up to our junior newsletters? Honestly, where have you beeeeen? Here’s the sign up page for more info, but what you mainly need to know is that they are a total hoot thanks to Katy’s splendid and eccentric mix of science news, activities and prizes. 4000 kids can’t be wrong! (Well, they can, e.g. McFly, but not about this…)

The Straw Trombone

You will need:

• a drinking straw
• a tall glass of water or some other liquid

What to do:

1. Put the straw into the glass of water.
2. Hold the glass in one hand and the straw in your other hand.
3. Holding the straw flat against the side of the glass, bring it up to your lips, just as if you were going to drink.
4. Now instead of putting the straw into your mouth, blow across the top of it. As you blow, move the straw back and forth, up and down slightly. When you get the angle just right, you will hear a whistling sound. This may be very faint, but with practice, you can get a very loud, clear whistle.
5. Once you get the straw to whistle, the fun begins! As you are blowing, keep the straw still, but move the glass of water slowly downwards. As the glass moves down, the tone of the whistle changes. Move the glass upwards and the tone changes again.

What’s going on?

When you blow across the top of the straw, you cause the air inside the straw to vibrate. This vibration causes the sound that you hear. By changing the length of the column of vibrating air, you change the sound. The longer the column of air, the lower the pitch. The shorter the column of air, the higher the pitch.

Why would moving the glass up and down change the length of the column of air? The water inside the straw will move to the same level as the water outside the straw. As you move the glass downwards, more of the straw is above the water level, so the length of straw that contains air is longer. When you move the straw downwards, more water moves into the straw and the length of the straw that is filled with air is shorter. So what are you waiting for? A one, a two, a one two three four….

Thanks Katy! Next week, the Cornish Pasty Trumpet – just kidding.

Latin! Get us! Thesaurus Scienta Lancastriae is the title of a project by artist Robert Williams and his son, Jack Aylward-Williams who, at the grand old age of er….5, entered into a science/art project with his dad.  Jack and Robert spent a year exploring the Williamson Park in Lancaster, with Jack becoming fascinated by the natural objects the park has to offer and Robert acting as facilitator, curator & organiser to the collection. The results are beautifully set out in a shed in the park, which you can see from January 29^th to February 11^th.

Robert has also produced a book to accompany the project, which he has offered as a ‘Mouses at the Ready’ prize.

It is for adults, and includes essays by ecologist Professor John Rodwell on childhood collecting and taxonomy and Historian Peter Wade on Lancaster’s famous scientist Sir Richard Owen, and Jack too, amongst many others, and is illustrated with over 100 pictures.

If you’d like to go in the draw to win this book for yourself or your school library, please email planet-science.news@nesta.org.uk  with Williamson Park Shed in the subject line – winner announced next week.

Two things to have your mouses ready for this week! Here’s the second…

If you live near Oxford and fancy a family day out at the Oxford Science Festival we’ve secured two family passes. This means you could transform an ordinary Sunday January the 29^th, into a super-science-Sunday!

Events which are suitable for children aged 7 – 12 include Cartoon Science, Chilly Science (liquid nitrogen), Fruity Faces, The Big Bug Show, and Hands-On science at the new ‘Science Oxford’.

Here’s where to find out more  www.oxtrust.org.uk/whatson/

If you’d like to go in the draw for a free family pass please email planet-science.news@nesta.org.uk with Festival Family in the subject line! Winners will be contacted on Thursday next week.

This week, despite, or maybe because of, the still dark mornings and the still dark afternoons and the short grey bits in between, (yaaaaaawn, stretch, must book a holiday) Roger Frost has been thinking about light, and lenses.

			An optics bench. Of all the heady physics topics I’d rate lenses as the most agreeable. That the angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection strikes me as wonderfully fair. That it underpins stuff about lenses and mirrors is shown rather dandily by this free ‘Java’ tool.  Though this is not so pretty just click ‘lens’, then click the black space and you will see a good-enough lens outlined. Drag the markers and its focal length changes. Drag the markers over each other and the lens turns concave – or whatever it’s called in new money. Now you have the idea you can add a beam of parallel rays. Add an object and match it for size and distance with the beam and see why the topic rocks. Optics Bench If you have Crocodile Physics software look within for a more cute version. 4 lenses

Thanks Roger.

NESTA colleague Sarah Biagetti, who studied Anthropology at Uni, has been hunter-gathering some Anthropology sites for you.

A great place to learn about your ancient hominid relatives is here http://www.becominghuman.org/ where a series of nicely paced and quite gentle documentary style ‘movies’ will enlighten you in the experts’ own words. There is lots of back up material too. In fact humans might have evolved into something else by the time you’ve read everything. Once you feel you have learnt a lot about Lucy and her hominid chums, try this game on the BBC site to test your knowledge.

There are other great prehistory games as well as the ‘cavemen’ game on the BBC site – here they are – the dino fossil skeleton puzzle game is impossible at the professional palaeontologist level! http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/prehistoric_life/games/

Number related jokes this week. P.S. Webmaster Neelesh (who is ‘giving up smoking’ in a way that still involves smoking) supplied this one:

Four cigarettes in a boat, but no cigarette lighter! So where do you get a lighter?
Three of the cigarettes throw the fourth cigarette overboard.
Now the boat’s a cigarette lighter.

Thanks Nee, or how about this from Steven McClintock from St Aloysius’ College Junior School:

And finally, here’s a couple of one-liners with numbers from Chris Parry of Summit Saturday School:

A bicycle cannot stand on its own because it is two tyred.

When a clock is hungry, it goes back four seconds.

Oooooooh! – thanks Chris, very much appreciated!

That’s all for this week, hope you’ve enjoyed it. If you have anything you'd like to contribute to next week’s Newsletter – particularly jokes - please send an email to planet-science.news@nesta.org.uk

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