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01. A DAY IN THE LIFE
 You meet them in the supermarket, you chat to them over the back wall, you may even share a few drinks with them on a Friday night... but who really knows what 'other people' actually get up to all day for a living? And could it possible that some of them are having more fun / more brain-stimulation / a better work social life than YOU??* This month Planet Science is launching a new feature called 'A Day in the Life' which takes us inside the workplaces of 11 scientists and engineers to check out ‘a day in their life’... A set of keen young investigators have been despatched to scientific and technological establishments around the country, on a mission to discover what it’s really like to be a ballistics researcher / building services engineer / space technologist etc. Adults should enjoy reading through the profiles for general interest and ‘Through the Keyhole’ style curiosity, but our main target audience is school pupils. As with other content in the Next Steps area of the PS website, we’d like to introduce young people to a world of jobs and research activities in science that they would probably never have encountered otherwise, and which inspire them to pursue their science studies... ‘A Day in the Life’ can be found here. * Remember, it’s (almost) never too late to change jobs, so if you’re over 18 but get inspired to make a career move, check out: OUTSIDE TRACK or email our CAREERS AGONY TEAM.  |
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02. MOUSES AT THE READY... for some INSPIRATION! If you’re in or around East Anglia, then stand by your beds because we have five family tickets to give away for the Inspire hands-on science centre in Norwich... The Inspire Centre is housed within the dramatic exterior of an old church, and it contains, amongst other things, 40 child-friendly interactive exhibits, a science café and the usual tempting shop full of sciencey gadgets and irresistable trinkets... There’s a full programme of high-octane science shows featuring live experiments and a themed exhibition, and when they’re not busy giving away free family passes to Planet Science, they’re heavily committed to hosting school parties and providing Curriculum-linked experiences and learning resources... Their current exhibition is all about RISK in our lives. Not only do they explain and illustrate what scientists and mathematicians mean by risk, but you can have a risky experience yourself, by trying your hand at Homer Simpson’s job – or maybe just having a shot at the climbing wall... If you can get yourself to Norwich and you fancy one of those 2-adults/2-kids passes, here’s your chance. Just send an email asap to anne@planet-science.com with the words I COULD DO WITH SOME INSPIRATION! in the subject heading, and – very important – your name, address and a contact number. All entries will go into a draw and the winners will be selected at 5pm on Wednesday 14th May. |
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03. ACTIVITY OF THE WEEK: GROW YOUR OWN CRYSTALS This week, explore the beauty of crystal formations that are hiding in your larder... What you’ll need:
Before you begin, you might want to have a look at some of the salt grains under a magnifying glass (or if you’ve got a Science Year digital microscope to hand, so much the better.) Examine the shapes of the crystals and sketch pictures of what you see. You should see that the grains are in the form of miniscule cubes. What you’re going to do next is grow some much bigger versions of these salt crystals… What to do:
What’s going on: The molecules of table salt (sodium chloride) have started to crystallize out of the solution onto the piece of cotton. If you leave the solution undisturbed for a few days, you'll be amazed at how big the crystals become. In many solids, the arrangements of the building blocks of the material (ion, atoms and molecules) can be a mixture of different structures. In crystals, however, a single type of collection 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. In your salt-crystal skyscraper there are two types of building block, sodium ions and chloride ions. These can be thought of as occupying the corners of each of the rooms, but in a particular way - if you looked closely at the corners of the rooms in the skyscraper, you'd see that alongside every sodium ion there's a chloride ion, and vice versa. You would never see two sodium ions next to each other, and likewise for the chloride ions. And if you want more... Many household goods are sold in the form of crystals - take a look under your kitchen sink and experiment by repeating the above experiment with sugar, Epsom salts (this should make "spiky" crystals), potash alum or iron tablets (you'll need to crush these first, before you dissolve them in the water) instead of the salt. Ask your local pharmacist for copper sulphate (blue) or potassium dichromate (orange) crystals. There are other coloured crystals you might be able to get your hands on as well (crystal growing 'kits' are readily available). Very many thanks to creative-chemist extrordinaire, Mike Bullivant of ‘Rough Science’ and Open University fame, who donated this activity to our Little Book of Experiments. We’ve got loads more, and you can have a rifle through them here |
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04. CITIES OF SCIENCE Quite a few months ago, we flagged up a website called ‘London City of Science’ which aims to promote and celebrate all things sciencey in the capital... Since then, the site has grown to include five more regions, namely the South West, the West Midlands, Greater Manchester, Liverpool and Tees Valley. And it’s been renamed CITIES OF SCIENCE. So if you fancy a quick city break, just click here: http://www.citiesofscience.co.uk As you’ll see, there’s plenty there already but there’s room for more stories, profiles or what’s-on tips on any of the city sites, and you’re cordially invited to make your presence felt. Instructions for preparing contributions are as follows: “individuals or groups of students can research a topic and publish it on the site. An entry typically consists of a couple of hundred words, one or two images and links to other sites offering more information.” Futhermore, the editor says, “We expect that scientists (including Science and Engineering Ambassadors) will use the site to tell the public about their work and its importance. People can learn from the site and use it to find the local relevance for their studies.” |
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05. SCIENCE BEHIND THE NEWS And on the news this week: we’re a bunch of household names... get us out of here! If you’ve been watching Celebrity recently, you must have found yourself occasionally wondering just how much danger the participants are really in. On the one hand, their agents – and insurance companies - did let them do it... but on the other, they are camped out in the Australian rainforest, and surely there could be creatures lurking that haven’t necessarily been marshalled into or out of position by the safety wardens? Science Line – all big Celebrity fans - have been investigating the subject of snakes and snakebites in this part of the world and you can read what they’ve discovered here: http://www.sciencenet.org.uk/slup/CuttingEdge/May03/snakebite.html As you’ll see they’ve rounded up a few extra weblinks at the bottom as further reading for snake-fans everywhere... Fangs a lot, guys! |
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06. RECOMMENDED WEBSITES OF THE WEEK First of all a page linking to lots of articles that will be of interest in you’re involved in teaching science to SEN pupils. INCLUSIVE SCIENCE AND SPECIAL EDUCATIONAL NEEDS have gathered together a range of journal articles from around the world that are free to view or download. Have a look through what’s available here: http://www.issen.org.uk/links.htm. And needless to say, there’s other useful material elsewhere on the ISSEN site, so have a click around...  And so to earthquakes... The pictures from last week’s Turkish disaster demonstrated once again the devastating power that earth tremors can have, and researchers are continually trying to improve techniques for predicting and designing buildings that can withstand their force... The Earthquake Engineering Research Centre at Bristol University is one of the leading earthquake establishments in the UK, and their kids’ site IDEERS is a brilliant educational resource. It’s full of animations, photos, and even recordings of earthquakes in action – and they’re currently running a competition in which participants are challenged to design and create earthquake-resistant structures... |
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07. JOKES OF THE WEEK Last week’s Rottweiler joke went down so well that it’s sender-in, Susan Lee, has provided us with two more: What do you get when you cross a pitbull with a collie? A dog that rips your leg off, then goes for help. and Darth Vader: "Luke Skywalker, I know what you're getting for your birthday." Luke: "How do you know?" Vader: "I felt your presents." Susan’s a Library Assistant in the States, and has thereby thrown down the gauntlet to joke-lovers around the globe to get emailing us! (And that would expand the joke-genepool so sounds like a very good idea…) Someone else, a person known only as 'Mark', has also sent in a joke this week: Did you hear about the farmer who was trying to win the Nobel prize? He heard you could get it for being out, standing in your field!! |
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| 08. AOB Hope those keep you rolling in the aisles all week – please send in any more you think of... and any other news or events you’d like to alert other newsletter readers to. E-mail Anne McNaught on anne@planet-science.com. And – have a great week! |
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