Welcome to the newsletter formally known as the Planet Science Newsletter. For a week to celebrate the new government arrangements we‘ve changed our name to the Newsletter for Children, Families, Schools, Innovation, Skills and Science and Engineering... and Enterprise and... no, that’s pretty much it.

The line-up this week:

1. Activity of the Week: Rainbow Fish
2. Mouses at the Ready: July Flipsides
3. Noticeboard: FYI
4. Recommended websites of the week
5. The Winners’ Enclosure
6. Joke of the Week

Fish, cabbage – with a hint of lemon….and a light vinegar dressing, it’s either dinner or a science activity….

Make a rainbow fish

You will need:

• Coffee filter paper
• Red cabbage
• Water
• Lemon juice or vinegar
• Bicarbonate of soda
• Children’s paintbrush
• Wiggly eye or paper eye
• Silver foil

What to do:

1. Prepare some red cabbage water by breaking red cabbage leaves into small pieces.
2. Pour hot water over the cabbage leaves and leave for half an hour.
3. Decant the purple liquid.
4. Soak the filter papers in the cabbage water and leave to dry.
5. Flatten out coffee filter on a plate.
6. Cut out a fish shape from the coffee filter.
7. Dip the paintbrush in lemon juice or vinegar and paint onto the fish.  See the colour change?
8. Make up some bicarbonate of soda solution by putting a couple of teaspoons of powder into a little water and mixing it up. Dip in the paintbrush and paint the fish.  See the colour change again?
9. Leave the fish to dry.
10. Glue on some small strips and triangles of silver foil.
11. Glue on a wiggly eye and draw on a mouth.

What’s going on?

These colour changes are all due to acid-base chemistry! The cabbage water is purple initially. When you add an alkali such as sodium bicarbonate it will turn blue but adding an acid such as vinegar will turn it red. Red cabbage contains the pigment anthocyanin and the structure of the molecules of anthocyanin changes depending on whether it is in an acid or an alkali solution. This change in structure means that the pigment can actually change colour from bright red in acid to deep blue in alkali.

This fantastic activity comes from the Under the Sea Party section on the Planet Science website. You might find all sorts of other activities of a fishy nature – just the thing for a summer (!) BBQ.

Plus if you have children who like to make bead pets then try out this beading activity.

It’s July so why not treat yourself to a copy of the July Flipside?  This month there’s a fascinating gallery of sports imagery using high-speed digital cameras.  Plus Magic vs Muggle-tech, not to mention Bruce Willis.  We said not to mention Bruce Willis! If you want to see more then check it out on www.flipside.org.uk

We’ve got TEN copies to give away.  If you want to win one then send your answer in an email with your name and address, and the words JULY FLIP in the subject line, to planet-science.news@nesta.org.uk.

The draw will take place at 5pm on Wednesday 11th July.

Wood Sustainability and Strength.

Those nice people from the catchily named Forest Industries Recruitment and Retention Strategy Centre for Timber Engineering, Napier University, got in touch to tell us about a game that will teach you pretty much everything you ever wanted to know about wood.

“You may be interest to know that we have had an online science game (well engineering) listed on Channel4's games website for a week. “The game is called "timber trumps"...although channel4 are listing it under the name "tree trumps".  It's a game in the familiar stat-based card battling model...but with the twist that the statistics are to do with different types of wood and some of the statistics are related.  The idea is to teach people about the varied properties of wood, but also, importantly, the differences in sustainability.  Not many people are aware of the big difference between illegally logged timber and timber from certified sources.

“We were amazed at the popularity of the game.  In just one week we had more than 5000 different people play the game from all over the UK and got up to number to in the list. There are a few things on our site, including some videos made by Nuffield Science Bursary students (these are also on Google video).”

Thanks for that!