Do you know that National Nest Box Week (14-21 February) is nearly upon us? Grab yourself a couple of bits of 4 be 2 and a handful of nails and head off for your nearest nest box building workshop. Of course if you’re more interested in the other kind of bird then you’d be better off knocking up a few crystal hearts. Or how about a heart-shaped nest box?  That way you could kill two birds with one stone. Poor choice of words. Happy Valentine’s Day anyhow.

The line-up this week:

1. Gimme Five – fascinating facts about earwax
2. The Five Kingdoms of Life: Hearts? and Roses
3. Animation training opportunity
4. Stump the Scientist: a question of crystals
5. Activity of the Week: Crystal hearts
6. Mouses at the Ready: Nest boxes
7. Noticeboard: FYI
8. Recommended websites of the week
9. The Winners’ Enclosure
10. Joke of the Week

This week’s Gimme Five is sent in by Sue Howarth from Tettenhall College

1. Ear wax is only found in humans and other mammals
2. Ear wax protects you against bacteria, insects and fungi
3. There are 2 kinds of earwax.  You will only have one kind.  Either the brown, wet type (most likely if you are European or African) or the grey, dry type (most likely if you are from Asia or a Native American)
4. The type of ear wax has been used to track human migration patterns over the world
5. Just as in humans, build up of wax can happen in whales.  Some species of whale build up their ear wax in layers each year and these layers can be used to work out the age of the whale after its death (a bit like counting tree rings can give you the age of  a tree after its been felled) 

Thanks Sue!

Happy Valentine's Day! Planet Science has got two new romantic masks from the kingdoms of life you can print and wear to mark the occasion: a red rose and a heart... which has been overrun by some nasty heartworms. Er... better make that one romantic mask!

Remember last week when Jim Garrett asked

Roy Lowry was quick to point out that this is not just a chemical effect; physics gets a look in too!

Tim Bloomfield agrees

Thanks for that scientists – on this occasion the scientist was NOT stumped!

This week’s stumper comes from Anne Duncan who asks

We hope so Anne.

You will need:

• Borax laundry powder (from old-fashioned style chemists)
• Pipecleaners
• A heavy jar, with a wide neck
• String
• A pencil
• A marker pen
• A glass
• Red food colour

What you do

1. Shape a pipecleaner into a heart shape
2. Suspend the heart with string from a pencil and hang it in the heavy jar.
3. Mark the jar to indicate where the top of the heart is (because you'll want to submerge the entire heart in solution in a minute).
4. Remove the heart and fill the jar with hot water up to the mark.
5. Add 1/3 glass of borax powder and stir until it is all dissolved. (The water needs to be just off boiling temperature, and borax is a mild irritant - so take care!) You can add red food colour at this point too which will make the heart grow pink crystals instead of white.
6. Suspend the heart in the solution making sure the pipecleaner is completely immersed in the solution and isn't touching the sides or bottom of the container.
7. As the solution cools, the crystals will begin to form on your pipecleaner.
8. Leave overnight. Remove from the solution and allow to dry.

What's going on?

The borax powder dissolves in the warm water but as the water cools the molecules of borax crystallise out of the solution onto the pipe cleaner. If you look closely you can see their shapes.

In many solids, the arrangement of the building blocks of the material (ion, atoms and molecules) can be a mixture of different structures. In crystals, however, a single arrangement of atoms is repeated over and over throughout the entire material. For an analogy, you can think of crystals as a big skyscraper, in which all the rooms are built to exactly the same design.

Variations:

Overnight soaking will give you very thickly crystallized ornaments. If you want some of the colour of the pipe cleaner to show through, leave in the solution for less time.

The crystals are somewhat fragile, so you might want to spray your finished ornament with acrylic sealer or clear spray paint to keep the crystals from falling off too quickly.

If you're feeling particularly creative, you can try making other shapes - we made an arrow to go with the heart - and you can play about with what food colours you add too. Try flower shapes, or teddy bear shapes – or anything you can bend your pipecleaners into. (Make sure there aren't too many wiggly bits though as the crystals are chunky and not good on detail!)

Special Safety Advice

Be careful when handling very hot water to avoid scalding injury. Borax can be an irritant to the skin – wear disposable gloves if necessary.

This activity was taken from the Little Book of Experiments.

If you prefer your science activities to be a little more visual then look at the Planet Scicast site.

Just in case you’re not up to (or too lazy to) build your own nest box – may we at NESTA present you with your very own nest(a) box.  We have two lovely wooden nest boxes to give away.

If you’d like to win one then email us with your name and address, and the words ‘NESTA BOX’ in the subject line, to planet-science.news@nesta.org.uk.

This week we are looking at a website about Neuroscience for Kids.

Blind spots, visual illusions and handy facts such as this:

An octopus does not have a blind spot! The retina of the octopus is constructed more logically than the mammalian retina. The photoreceptors in the octopus retina are located in the inner portion of the eye and the cells that carry information to the brain are located in the outer portion of the retina. Therefore, the octopus optic nerve does not interrupt any space of retina.

By the way, if you’ve got a good website to recommend then send it along to us at planet-science.news@nesta.org.uk with RWW in the subject line. Thank you very gladly.