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1. The miser’s guide to the National Lottery
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 Never mind the casino, perhaps you prefer to hedge your bets by playing the National Lottery. If so then our resident math-magician Ben Craven is on hand to give us a few tips.
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To get the best value from your lottery ticket, there are two Really Important Things To Know. The first is that any set of numbers is as likely to win as any other. No system will make you more likely to win. All you can do is try to share your jackpot (if it even happens) with as few other people as possible.
To do this, you need to know the second Really Important Thing: although the lottery machine is good at picking random numbers, people aren’t. This is where you can get an edge.
For example, most of us tend to spread our numbers too evenly between 1 and 49 – so you should choose numbers that are bunched together. And people tend to choose numbers near the middle of the ticket, so you should choose yours from near the edges.
But here’s the problem: if everyone starts following these guidelines, they’ll all be picking numbers like yours, and you’ll end up sharing the jackpot again! The system only works if very few people use it.
Here’s a real example. Most people won’t choose the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 – they don’t seem “random” enough. A tiny percentage of lottery players, who understand probability, try to get an advantage by choosing this set of numbers. The trouble is that this tiny percentage is actually quite a lot of folk – if you do win with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, you’ll be sharing your jackpot with several thousand people!
You just can’t win, can you?
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Thanks Ben, maybe we’d have better luck on the Thunderball…
Talking of the National Lottery – you might be interested to know that Planet Science being part of NESTA is funded by the National Lottery. NESTA is the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts and the ‘endowment’ part is an endowment of lottery money. So this is where some of your money goes. Make you feel any better about not winning a million?
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2. 007 Bond Movies – find them all and win X-ploda Roulette
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 Listen very carefully agent. This is your mission. You have twenty seconds to digest this information. And after that … you saw nothing (waves hands in the air mysteriously). Find seven titles of James Bond movies in this newsletter. Not including Casino Royale (we’re not that dim!). When you’ve found them send them to us in an email with your name and address to planet-science.news@nesta.org.uk with WE’VE BONDED as the subject line.
You could win an X-ploda balloon roulette game. You play the game by inserting an inflated balloon into the Xploda, pressing the Randomiser button, and passing it round a group of friends. There's a wheel of fortune type spinny thing in the middle which each person spins, and it decides whether you spin again, pass it to your left, right, or have the happy choice of giving it to anyone at random in the group.
This is all very jolly, but deep in the machine a time bomb is ticking away, and at an indeterminate time a tiny needle will zip out of the unit and pop the balloon. Not for those with a dodgy ticker then.
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3. Stump the Scientist
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 This week is more like Swamp the Scientist! Pleading for an answer must have touched your sensitive side because we are inundated with helpful hints. So in the interests of keeping it short but sweet(!), we’ll consider the balloon question this week and leave the dirt till next week.
Dr Alan P Glaze asked
“When you inflate a long balloon, why does it always inflate at the end nearest the blower?”
Well this is serious stuff as Reuben Thompstone tells us. And he should know, he’s a physics teacher. Apparently it’s all due to hysterisis. We thought that was caused by this week’s joke. Oh no, that’s hysterics.
“When blowing up a balloon, the rubber needs to stretch to accommodate the increased number of air particles, thus the volume increases. Rubber is quite different from springs in the way it expands. This is because the microstructure in rubber is comprised of long fibres scrunched up in a ball. Applying a force on the rubber unfolds these loops, known as hysterisis loops, causing the rubber to stretch.
A force applied on a spring causes an increase in length directly proportional to the force. Hysterisis loops behave differently, requiring a relatively large force to initiate the unravelling, then needing only a minimal increase in force to stretch fully. Thus in a balloon, the first section requires significant force to start expanding and then relatively little to fully inflate. Only after the first section has fully inflated and can stretch little more does the increase in pressure on the next section result in a sufficient force to commence inflation. Thus the balloons inflate from the section closest to the source of the force (blowing) before expanding down the length.”
 Peter Levitt chips in with
“Pressure is caused by molecular collisions on surfaces so the on average inside the balloon the number of collision per second on each square centimetre will be the same. These collisions exert force on the material. The pressure then will be the same in all parts of the balloon.
Blow in more air and have more collisions per second per square centimetre and so more force exerted so the material begins to stretch. The balloon blower continues to put in more air molecules and so the force exerted increases all the time. Once the initial stretching has occurred then the material there is made thinner - so the increasing force exerted per square centimetre has more effect on the thinner material and produces more deformation which means the material is thinner and so on.
The same effect occurs when entertainers blow up a rubber glove - the palm area deforms first and the fingers hardly blow up at all. Try this with a surgical glove - thinner material in the first place - and you will get a more uniform shape.
The shaped balloons in the illustration may well have slightly different thicknesses in different places hence the different shapes.”
 We’ll let Nigel Bowen have the last word…
“There are 2 ways of explaining this, one in terms of forces and the other in terms of energy:
Forces explanation: When you first blow in the balloon, the end nearest you blows up first because the force required to stretch the rubber at the end nearest you is less than the force required across the rest of the balloon. This is because the rubber near the end is slightly softer because it is where the balloon is taken out of the mould in the manufacturing process.
If you then stop blowing, the balloon stays inflated at one end and not at the other because the balloon rubber has a non-linear extension-load relationship (i.e. it does not follow Hooke's Law) - as the balloon rubber is stretched it requires less force to stretch it further (this is why a balloon can be difficult to blow up at first - and why stretching it before you blow it up makes it easier to blow up). So the uninflated end of the balloon can balance the inflated end of the balloon because the unstretched rubber provides more tension.
Energy explanation: Physics always likes to follow the 'minimum work' rule (a bit like a school pupil!). If the long balloon were to all inflate at the same time, this would require more energy than inflating just the one end, which would break a universal law in physics.
However, if you blow up a spherical balloon, it blows up in all directions because the force required to stretch the rubber is the same in all directions (unlike the long balloon).
Phew!”
And I’m afraid we’ll need to halt it there. We had lots of responses to this and all gave interesting and important information. However, if we put it all in then it wouldn’t be the Planet Science Newsletter it would be a new textbook. We are very grateful for all who took the time to send us an email especially
Francesca Elner, Simon Lampitt, Alan Suart, Dave Hall, you are all stars!
Once again the scientist was NOT stumped!
If you can help or if you have a burning question of your own then send us an email with STUMP THE SCIENTIST in the subject line to planet-science.news@nesta.org.uk
Claire from the Oxford Trust sent us this joke:
Silver and iron are at a bar. Gold walks in. The barman says "AU What do you want to drink?"
Need to keep a GoldenEye on that one…
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4. Activity of the Week: Secret messages
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 There are many ways of hiding a message and we’ve found four of them. The choice – Mr Bond – is yours…
You will need:
- Candle or white wax crayon
- Paper
- Water-based paint
- Cotton buds
- Lemon juice
- Bicarbonate of soda
- Red cabbage water (see instructions)
- Pencil
- Paintbrush
What to do:
Method 1: Candle or wax crayon
- Write your message on a piece of paper using the candle or crayon. Can you see it? No of course not!
- Now paint over the message with water based paint. See the message now? Aha!
Method 2: Lemon juice
- Write your message on a piece of paper using a cotton bud dipped in lemon juice. See the message? No.
- Now either iron over the message or place it near a light bulb (help children to do this). We don’t want anyone getting burnt! See the message now? Oooh yes! And it’s gone brown!
Method 3: Pencil and wet paper
- Wet some paper, just a bit, and place another sheet of paper on top. Use the pencil to write your message quite gently.
- Take the topmost paper off. Wait for the wet paper to dry. Can you see your message? No (sounding a little irritated at being ask the same thing over and over).
- Now wet the paper again. Well would you believe it? There’s the message.
Method 4: Bicarbonate of soda and red cabbage water
- Dissolve two teaspoons of bicarbonate of soda in four tablespoons of warm water.
- Write your message on the paper using a cotton bud dipped in the solution.
- Let it dry. Can you see it? Sigh. No. And it’s not funny any more.
- Pour hot water over some shredded red cabbage leaves. Leave for 15 mins and then strain. You should have a dark purple solution.
- Paint the red cabbage water over your message. Well I never!
- Try it again but this time use lemon juice instead of bicarbonate of soda.
What’s going on?
Method 1: Candle or wax crayon
Wax is oil based and oil and water do not mix. The paint will not stick to the wax message so the paint soaks into the paper and leaves the waxy areas paint-free. Your message will show up white against a coloured background.
Method 2: Lemon juice
The lemon juice is very nearly clear so does not show up on the paper when it is dry. When you heat the paper, the lemon juice starts to burn. Like all organic material (i.e. anything that was once living), the lemon juice contains carbon. When it burns, some of the carbon is released in the same way a candle releases soot. The brown writing is just the carbon that has come out of the charred lemon juice.
Method 3: Pencil and wet paper
The pressure from your pencil will mash up the fibres on the lower, damp sheet of paper. Mashed up fibres reflect the light differently to normal, unmashed fibres. But when the paper dries, the fibres look the same, so your message disappears - until you wet the paper again.
Method 4: Bicarbonate of soda and red cabbage water
Red cabbage water is a dark purple colour. It is a natural indicator which means it changes colour in the presence of acids or alkalis. With acids it turns red or pink and with alkalis it turns blue or green. Bicarbonate of soda is alkaline and when the red cabbage water is painted on it turns blue and shows up against the purple background. If you use lemon juice instead the message will appear red against a purple background.
So which method works best? Let us know!
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5. Mouses at the Ready
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 Bolton Technical Innovation Quiz
Running until the 29th of November we are offering the winner, from anywhere in the UK, an all expenses paid (including teacher cover) trip for you and your class (primary or secondary) to the amazing Bolton TIC, where amongst other more design and technology experiences there’s a lot of Science on offer too.
For example, if Physics is your thing you could construct and operate an ion-wind lifter - the device weighs only one gramme but will produce 2 grammes of thrust. Or build and launch a rocket (with a real rocket scientist) – and maybe even enter the competition to find the best young rocket scientists! Or….operate a flight simulator to develop flying skills and construct a model aircraft to put the skills into practice.
Or maybe Astronomy gets you going, in which case you can see their virtual 3D solar system and visit any planet, look at live images of the sun through their solar telescope and make a telescope to take home.
How about some Chemistry? You can make some classy products using safe houshold chemicals, or Biologists can make art inspired by natural forms, scan objects, import data into a virtual environment and manipulate/finish with haptic technology before printing in 3D.
Whoar! How can you resist? Bolton TIC’s Paul Abbott (think of him as Bond’s ‘Q’ but in the world of education!) will help the winning class design their day.
So, James, your mission will be to answer 10 peeeeesy questions about Bolton TIC (anyone can enter, so get your class to enter for even more chances) and the winner will be extracted from the hat on Wednesday 29th.
Click here to enter.
Good luck 007!
And as an extra treat...
This week we have five copies of the December Flipside with none other than JB himself on the cover! Yes Daniel Craig and features on set with bond stunts, cars, villains etc. Ve-ry interesting…
So do you want to win one? If so, send your answer in an email with your name and address, and the words SHAKEN BUT NOT STIRRED in the subject line, to planet-science.news@nesta.org.uk.
The draw will take place at 5pm on Wednesday 22nd November.
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‘My Chemist’ game for KS4 girls
With funding from NESTA, The Women’s Business Development Agency in Coventry has launched a computer simulation game called ‘My Chemist’ in which teams of girls run a retail pharmacist, making all of the required marketing, financial and scientific decisions that this kind of enterprise requires. The game is backed up by a teacher’s pack with curriculum links and extension activities, and can be combined with other enterprise and science activities (e.g. meeting real-life entrepreneurs and scientists).
http://www.mychemistgame.co.uk/
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Ticket to Space – online interactive event for primary schools
This year learning and Teaching Scotland are running an online event ‘Ticket to Space’ which supports the teaching of Earth and Space. It runs from October 23 to December 3 2006.
The event consists of lesson plans, background information for teachers and plenty of on and offline activities. Pupils can find out about the solar system, design their own probe to send into space, explore gravity and ask their questions to the experts that they have about space.
This year schools have been able to communicate with each other through the Ticket to Space blog.
Click here for more information on how to take part.
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Planet Science November Quiz
What’s the Planet Science November Quiz about? Nothing. Nothing at all. We’ve put the Dr No into November with the Voids Vacuums and Vacancies Quiz, with plenty of non-answers surrounding the right ones. Spot all the correct ones though, and you could win – NOTHING! See – we told you. That’s right – your prize could be a ‘style icon’ of a vacuum flask. Every spy should have one.
Click here to enter.
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GIFT conference – secondary school teachers
There are places for up 6 high school teachers from across the UK to attend GIFT in Vienna between the 16th and 18th April 2007. The theme of GIFT 2007 will be Geosciences in the City. Selected teachers will receive a travel/hotel stipend and free registration to the meeting and a chance to meet other Earth Science teachers from across Europe. There is also the opportunity to stay in Vienna and take part in the ECORD teachers Workshop on 18/19th April (ECORD, European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling!)
For more information and download an application form
UK applications before 1st December 2006, should be directed to:
Dr. Phil Smith, Teacher Scientist Network, John Innes Centre, Colney Lane, Norwich, NR4 7UH.
Queries or expressions of interest in advance to phil.smith@bbsrc.ac.uk (particularly if fulfilling the closing date would be the only restraining factor on your application)
Vienna eh? So Mr Bond we meet again. Last time no good. Weather bad in Moscow. But Vienna… hmmmmm…maybe zis time take overcoat. Here. Pliss. From Russia with love.
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Podcast from Steve Jones
A recent talk by Steve Jones on "why creationism is wrong and evolution is right" is now available to download from the public lecture podcast at:
http://www.bath.ac.uk/podcast
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8. Joke of the Week
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You have a licence to kill yourself laughing at this one…
Intelligence
Two men were digging a ditch on a very hot day. One said to the other, "Why are we down in this hole digging a ditch when our boss is standing up there in the shade of a tree?" “I don't know," responded the other. "I'll ask him.
So he climbed out of the hole and went to his boss. "Why are we digging in the hot sun and you're standing in the shade?" "Intelligence," the boss said. "What do you mean, 'intelligence'?"
The boss said, "Well, I'll show you. I'll put my hand on this tree and I want you to hit it with your fist as hard as you can." The ditch digger took a mighty swing and tried to hit the boss' hand. The boss removed his hand and the ditch digger hit the tree. The boss said, "That's intelligence!"
The ditch digger went back to his hole. His friend asked, "What did he say?" "He said we are down here because of intelligence." "What's intelligence?" said the friend. The ditch digger put his hand on his face and said, "Take your shovel and hit my hand."
Can you do any better? You know where we are: planet-science.news@nesta.org.uk Don’t forget to put JOKES in the subject line.
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Still catching your breath from all those balloons in Stump the Scientist? Here's some quickfire RRWs for you...
