Today sees the launch of our fantastic UK wide competition challenging people to make mini movies of exciting science experiments. Yes Planet Scicast is born! Did you not hear the Big Bang? Anyway read on for full details and then rush off and prime your camcorder. Alfred Hitchcock eat your heart out. Give it some passion dahling! We need to ask ourselves – what is the matchstick’s motivation in this scene?

The line-up this week:

1. Planet Scicast
2. Astronomy of Astrology: Leo
3. Activity of the Week: Rochelle salt
4. Mouses at the Ready for Royal Society 2007 General Prize shortlist
5. Noticeboard: FYI
6. The Winners’ Enclosure
7. Joke of the Week

If you thought the discovery of a possible inhabitable planet outside our Solar System was exciting – then hold your horses! May we present to you the phenomenal Planet Scicast! Never heard of it?  Well you have now!  

The National Endowment for Science, Technology & the Arts (NESTA) has teamed up with The Engineering and Technology Board (ETB) and the Institute of Physics to launch a UK wide competition challenging people to make mini movies of exciting science experiments.

‘Planet SciCast’ is designed to increase both science engagement and creativity in and out of the classroom, and judges will be looking for self-made movies that depict interesting scientific facts or problems in a unique way.  Examples so far include ‘Wild West Fizz Out’, a demonstration in the style of western shoot out, of how tapping a shaken drinks can causes bubbles to rise, join together and render themselves harmless; and the ‘elephant’s toothpaste’ chemical reaction, filmed as a silent movie.

The competition is open to anyone with an interest in science, with a particular focus on teams of young people from secondary and primary schools, science teachers, and science and engineering professionals. 

All the competition entries, accompanied by a written description, will be available at www.planet-scicast.com, which is intended to become a useful resource for teachers and provide engaging material for young people – a YouTube of the science world.  So if you fancy yourself as a budding Spielberg, a fledgling Tarantino or even a prospective Hitchcock then give it a go!

To mark the launch on 27 April, the NESTA team spend the day at Swinton Community School in South Yorkshire, where local MP John Healey took a starring role in two mini movies made by the students.  John tried his hand at kitchen table-style experiments involving ice water and matchsticks! MPs and hands-on science?  This we must see!

Films should be no more than two minutes and thirty seconds in length and will be judged by a panel of experts including Dr Alice Roberts and one of Channel 4’s ‘Men in White,’ Basil Singer.  The winning team will receive a ‘Planet-SciCastie’ Award.  The closing date for entries will be 4 January 2008.

To give entrants an idea of the mix of science and film-making creativity NESTA is looking for, Jonathan Sanderson, the freelance TV producer who came up with the idea, has been working with school children and the staff at science centres to help create some examples, which can be found on the site: www.planet-scicast.com.

Jonathan says

“Planet SciCast is a fantastic way of getting people – especially children – excited about how science actually works.  It’s designed to educate by entertaining.  We’re hoping the competition won’t just unleash people’s inner Spielberg but will also encourage a new generation who can bridge the perceived gap between the creative and the scientific”.

The Institute of Physics is the overall sponsor of the physics category which has the added challenge of entrants having to explain the physics featured in their films.

The Institute of Biology and the Earth Science Education Unit will also contribute with expertise and ideas, and with help writing up the demonstrations.

What’s this lion around? Oh it’s the new piece from Alison Begley, Astronomer Extraordinaire.  Over to you Alison…

			Leo (July 23 - August 22) Constellations away from the Milky Way don't always have such easy to spot stars, but there is more to the night sky than the obvious. How to find Leo…Use the section of the saucepan under the handle in Ursa Major to point to Leo: Regulus is the first bright star you come to.  From there it's reasonably straightforward to find the rest of the constellation. Regulus is the bright blue star that marks out the lion's heart.  It is the 25th brightest star in the night sky, a not unspectacular claim to fame, but it isn't the first star that jumps out at you when you glance up.  However, what we see is just the tip of the iceberg.  Our eyes are sensitive to light with wavelengths between 0.4 and 0.7 thousandths of a millimetre.  This 'visible light' makes up a tiny fraction of the total light spectrum, which ranges from radio waves with wavelengths of metres to gamma rays with wavelengths of a million, millionths of a metre. The sky at other wavelengths looks very different.  Visible light is blocked by dust and gas, so places like the centre of our galaxy are obscured, rather like looking through a fog.  Conveniently telescopes are not restricted to collecting visible light… images collected by infrared, ultraviolet, X-ray, and radio telescopes are sometimes unrecognisable as the sky we know. The star CW Leonis is the brightest star in the sky in infrared light but it is surrounded by dust and gas and so is virtually undetectable in visible light.  While Sirius is the brightest star in the sky in the sky in visible light, one of its constellation buddies, Adhara, is the brightest in ultraviolet.  (To see these look early in the evening, Orion's belt points down to them.) Different stars are brighter at different wavelengths for a number of reasons: some are cooler, or hotter, others are shrouded in a dust cloud that absorb and reradiate the light from the central star.  The star type, its magnetic field, and even how it is spinning, all change how we see it.  All these forms of radiation and the telescopes invented to detect them, add up to give us an idea of not just what the universe looks like, but how it works too.

Pardon?  Did you say ‘Never heard of her!’?  It’s the name of a compound you chump! And it’s great to use in crystal–growing competitions.

You will need:

• Small glass or plastic container (x2)
• Bicarbonate of Soda (available from supermarkets)
• Cream of Tartar (available from supermarkets)
• Teaspoon
• Dessertspoon
• Hot water
• Small bowl
• Small saucepan
• Funnel
• Filter paper (or use coffee filter)

What to do:

1. Place one level teaspoonful of Bicarbonate of Soda in the container.
2. Add 5 dessertspoonfuls (50 ml) of water and stir well.  It will not dissolve completely.
3. Place the container in a bowl of hot water to aid the dissolving process.
4. Add one level teaspoonful of Cream of Tartar to the container and stir till the bubbles subside.
5. Repeat this procedure with two more level teaspoons of Cream of Tartar.
6. Continue to stir the solution until the bubbles subside completely.
7. Place the funnel in another container.
8. Put a filter paper in the funnel and pour in the contents of the container.
9. Alternatively pour the contents into a tall narrow vessel and wait for the undissolved solid to settle. Then decant off the liquid.
10. Pour the filtered liquid into the saucepan.
11. Heat the liquid to reduce its volume by half and then return the liquid to the container.
12. Leave the container to cool and you will see the crystals forming.

What’s going on?

Chemically speaking, Bicarbonate of Soda is sodium hydrogencarbonate and Cream of Tartar is potassium bitartrate. When reacted together they form a double salt called potassium sodium tartrate or ‘Rochelle salt’ KNa(C₄H₄O₆)·4H₂O. It’s also called Seignette salt after Pierre Seignette, an apothecary of La Rochelle, France, who was the first to make it (c.1675). The reaction is endothermic i.e. it takes in heat energy from the surroundings.  You can feel the cooling effect if you place your hand around the container as you add the Cream of Tartar to the Bicarbonate of Soda.

The Rochelle salt crystallises out from solution on cooling. To grow a crystal, firstly you will need to select a perfect example and use it as a ‘seed crystal’. Larger crystals will form if the rate of cooling of the solution is slow. Also the solution should be left undisturbed for several days and preferably covered so that dust etc. does not trigger crystallisation. Secondly take the seed crystal, tie cotton around it and suspend it in a saturated solution.

How to make a saturated solution of Rochelle salt? You need to redissolve the crystals. It will be helpful to know that about 60 g of Rochelle salt will dissolve in about 100 g of water at room temperature. As you warm the water, you can dissolve more Rochelle salt.