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01. PLANET-SCIENCE.COM GETS MAKEOVER
 Just a quick alert to the fact that the Planet Science website has had some extra fairy dust sprinkled over it overnight and there's lots of groovy animations on all the main section homepages for you to enjoy... Have a look at http://www.planet-science.com. Hope you like them!  |
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02. DNA ON A PLATE If you're just visiting Earth for the day and hadn't yet noticed it's the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the structure of DNA, we've compiled a quick web-guide to what it's all about and what's going on around the country. And you can find it here. More DNA developments coming up later... |
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03. BBC FAMILY ROBOT DAYS - SCHOOLS REQUIRED! Planet Science has a long and metal-chompingly distinguished relationship with the hungry herculean heroes of Robot Wars... and the BBC have just been in touch to offer a number of schools and families the chance to get roboteering for themselves later this year... Beginning in the summer, and going through until December, the BBC are running a pilot project in which 100 schools across England will get to invite families in their community to take part in a series of robot building workshops. The aim is for families to have fun working with participating schools and community partners to build a basic working robot. To support the workshops, the BBC will be providing kits and hand-on activities, and an Expert Roboteer from Techno Games and Robot Wars will visit each school to run a unique Masterclass for robot builders of all ages. The Beeb will also provide contact information for community partners who can help. If your school would like to be one of the 100 robo-venues involved, you could be in luck as there are a still a number of places that haven't yet been assigned. To find out more about the scheme and how your school can take part, visit the 'Learning with the BBC' website at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/beyond. There, you'll find full details of Family Robot Days along with the BBC school registration form. P.S. The DfES are supporting this pilot project, which is why it's only taking place in England. But watch this space for UK-wide developments... |
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04. MORE FOR SCHOOLS If you're at a secondary school in England you should now have received MicroScience(tm) kit for your science lab. If you haven't, hold tight, it should be with you in the coming days. This has been sent out by the Philip Harris company, as part of the Planet Science Creative Classrooms campaign. Here's what they say, "Designed and developed in South Africa, where it swept the board in the National Science and Technology Awards, MicroScience has been brought to Britain by Edu-lab Educational Products and Systems. The MicroScience kit makes use of the unique Combo-plate(r) which is at the heart of the equipment system. A small plastic plate with 60 wells that replaces traditional test tubes and beakers, the plate is little bigger than a palm-pilot computer and is incredibly light weight and rugged. However the showpiece in the range is the Combo-still, an incredible piece of distillation apparatus, which won the 2000 Worlddidac Award." Being small and perfectly formed, the kits can help teachers to fit much more practical science into lessons. Small volumes mean that the reactions are fast, apparatus heats up and cools down very rapidly and setting up and clearing away are also quicker... For further information about the innovative MicroScience kit, have a look at http://www.philipharris.co.uk. And watch out for yours coming up the driveway... |
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05. ACTIVITY OF THE WEEK: DNA ICING And back to DNA. To celebrate the 50th anniversary - today - of the publication of the scientific paper in which James Watson and Francis Crick announced the structure of DNA, we have another DyNAmite activity in store. It looks good... and it should taste pretty good too. It was devised by Dean Madden, DNA-guru from the National Centre for Biotechnology Education, and was inspired by those Thornton's Easter Eggs... Thorntons, as you may know, will ice a name onto your chocolate for no extra charge, but for some reason they will not do DNA drawings... No matter - you can do it yourself. Dean here explains how you can ice a double-helix onto your egg/cake/whatever. To check out what this looks like in full colour, sneak a peak at the BCBE website at http://www.ncbe.reading.ac.uk Eat your heart out Nigella! YOU WILL NEED
WHAT TO DO You need to make a fairly stiff Royal Icing as follows: Put 1 egg white in a bowl. Stir in about 3 tablespoons of sifted icing sugar until a smooth consistency is obtained. Don't whisk it vigorously as air bubbles are the last thing you want (they will cause breaks in whatever you ice). Gradually add, about a heaped tablespoon at a time, more sifted icing sugar, stirring after each addition. Stop adding sugar when the icing stands up in peaks as you lift the spoon out (after about 250 g of icing sugar has been added). This will be enough to decorate a large number of eggs or other lovely smooth chocolatey surface... HINTS Don't be tempted to eat any of the icing - even a small amount will make you feel quite sick! If by accident, you do get air bubbles in the icing, cover the bowl with a damp cloth and leave it in the fridge overnight. It's a good idea to practise the drawing first on a sheet of paper, then to try icing it on some paper before attempting with the egg. Instructions below + check the website again! ADDING THE PATTERN Through trial and error, Dean concludes that it's easiest to do the icing with a 10ml syringe as it's hard to find a thin enough icing nozzle to do the job properly... (If you want to divide up icing and add colourings, do so now - see later for guidance.) Add the icing to the syringe with a teaspoon and pack it in carefully to avoid creating air bubbles. Wipe any spilt icing from the side of the syringe with a damp cloth - it's important to keep everything clean as you go, otherwise icing will end up everywhere. Now get your chocolate into position... you're ready to begin icing. To draw a double helix, first draw a curvy zig-zag that is fairly widely-spaced along the length of the chocolate. Then draw another one slightly out-of-step with the first so that you get 'major' and 'minor' grooves down each side. Add base-pairs as 'rungs' across the helix if there is space and you feel confident enough (there are supposed to be 10 base-pairs per turn of the helix). Let the icing set for 20-30 minutes. It should now be very hard. HINTS Stop pressing on the syringe plunger before you reach the end of a line. Make sure the spout of the syringe doesn't become blocked with set icing - cover the end with a damp cloth if you leave it between applying the icing. You can add colouring to the icing if you wish to colour the base-pairs appropriately. The colours used in DNA sequencing machines (the closest we have to 'official' colours) are: Yellow- Guanine; Blue - Cytosine; Green - Adenine; Red - Thymine. Et voila! Proof that chocolate is the secret of life... |
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| 06. SCIENCE BEHIND THE NEWS Tuesday saw the arrival of baby Carys Zeta into the Douglas Dynasty - congratulations to all concerned. Between catching up on the celebrity gossip, Science Line have been reflecting on the latest biological research into what makes the stork decide whether to bring a boy or a girl (and apparently there are NO storks involved - eh???) Read all about it at: http://www.sciencenet.org.uk/slup/CuttingEdge/Apr03/ catherine.html |
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| 07. RECOMMENDED WEBSITES OF THE WEEK First of all, a search engine that's purely dedicated to scientific information. It's called... SCIRUS http://www.scirus.com  It may not be quite as good-looking as Google, but then it's got a serious image to portray. And it came up with good stuff on everything we searched, so could be a goldmine for the future... Much of the information is in the form of articles as opposed to whole websites, so it's probably particularly suited to adults or older students with some knowledge of science already. Try it out for yourself and let us know what you think. PARENTS ONLINE http://www.parentsonline.gov.uk  For all parents or teachers, if you've not come across PARENTS ONLINE before, check it out now. Not only are they helpfully promoting the PLANET SCIENCE WHODUNIT but right now they're hosting a website-building programme, which is totally free for schools to use, and they have 100 freebies for parents too. They provide you with full instructions, plus examples of what others have done, and you can even win a prize if yours is particularly stunning... (P.S. If you're much too young and funky to be building websites the Parents Online way, we did notice that on the SMASH HITS site there's another website builder, and they're offering a 14-day free trial.) And for all sorts of other info about website building, have a look at WEBMONKEY and in particular WEBMONKEY FOR KIDS - they're fab. |
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| 08. JOKES OF THE WEEK Two rather painful, not to say excruciating, jokes this week. Ready? OK: A young woman goes to her doctor complaining of pain. "Where are you hurting?" asks the doctor. "You've got to help me, I hurt all over", says the woman. "What do you mean, all over?" asked the doctor, "be a little more specific." The woman touches her right knee with her index finger and yells, "Ow, that hurts." Then she touches her left cheek and again yells, "Ouch! See, that hurts, too." Then she touches her right earlobe and cries "Ow, even THAT hurts." The doctor checked her over thoughtfully for a moment and tells her his diagnosis. "You have a broken finger." And secondly, a Tony Blackburn classic: Patient: "Whenever I drink coffee, I get a stabbing pain in my eye." Doctor: "Have you tried removing the spoon from the cup before taking a drink?" |
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| 09. AOB That's all for this week, except to reveal the winners of the competition to win family passes to the Monster Creepy Crawlies exhibition at the Life Science Centre in Newcastle. The lucky people are: Karen Walsh, Tyne & Wear Jon Ward, Gateshead David Pratt, Cumbria Catherine Harper, Staffordshire The Creaghan Family, Durham City Kathryn McGee, Renfrewshire; Lorna S Thorne, Birmingham Mr Graham Harper, Sunderland Jane Wrighton, Hexham Lynne John, Sutton Coldfield. Congratulations everyone - hope you enjoy the show! The newsletter will be back next week with another bagful of snippets and nuggets of science goodness. Please send any contributions to Anne McNaught on anne@planet-science.com. In the meantime, have a great week! |
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