Stardate Friday 4th July 2008 Issue 283

At last a sit-com set in a university science laboratory! Will it be any good? Tune in to Lab Rats on Thursday 10 July on BBC2 to find out. Let us know what you think. Is science and comedy a heady mix? Will it rival the US’s The Big Bang Theory? And talking of the Big Bang – three little words my friend …Large Hadron Collider. Read on.

The line-up this week:

  1. Gimme Five – facts about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)
  2. The Lowestoft Energy Challenge
  3. Science Down Under
  4. A Spot of Agri-Culture: it’s a revolution
  5. Activity of the Week: Time within the Images
  6. Mouses at the Ready: June and July Flipsides
  7. Noticeboard: FYI
  8. Recommended Websites of the Week
  9. The Winners’ Enclosure
  10. Joke of the Week

Just in case you were wondering…

“LHC - the aim of the exercise:
To smash protons moving at 99.999999% of the speed of light into each other and so recreate conditions a fraction of a second after the big bang. The LHC experiments try and work out what happened.”

1.Gimme Five... fascinating facts about...?

The Large Hadron Collider

  1. Part of the LHC will be the world's largest fridge. It could hold 150 000 fridges full of sausages at a temperature colder than deep outer space.
  2. When the 27km long circular tunnel at CERN was excavated, between Lake Geneva and the Jura mountain range, the two ends met up with just one centimetre of error.
  3. CERN is the world's largest laboratory dedicated to the pursuit of fundamental science.
  4. Verification of the theory that explains why the sun shines - the weak force - is one of CERN's biggest achievements.
  5. A nominal proton beam in the LHC will have an energy equivalent to a person in a Subaru driving at 1700 kph.

These facts came from the CERN LHC site.
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2. The Lowestoft Energy Challenge

The Energy Challenge is a pilot project developed by (Planet Science Mothership) NESTA Future Innovators and the Make Your Mark campaign. It involved teams of students from a primary school, secondary school and a college in Lowestoft, Suffolk taking responsibility for researching and learning about the issue of climate change, coming up with ideas about how they could improve the energy efficiency of their school and then pitching these to a panel of judges to secure funding to implement them.

Now a programme about the project is airing on Teachers TV on 8 July at 4.40pm. It will be downloadable from the Teachers TV site after this date.

On Teachers TV the programme is described as follows:

“Poplars Primary School have benefited from a visit from the Green Energy Machine and now have a team of energy monitors, and Denes High School focuses on energy-saving workshops to make others aware of the importance of energy saving activities.

Students from Lowestoft College look into the use of biofuel in cars and enter a competition to gain funding to make their college more energy compliant.

The determined pupils relay their messages to one another in alternative ways, all hoping to make their environment more energy efficient.”

Teachers TV

8th July

4.30 pm
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3. Science Down Under - Australia's Unique Animals

G'Day!! Greetings from Down Under! My name is Nigel Bowen and I am a science teacher from the UK who is currently working in Australia.

One of the very first questions I get asked by people back home is: have you seen any koalas or kangaroos? Or any dangerous animals? The answers are: yes and yes.

Two things are fascinating about Australia's animals - many of them are unique, and a lot of them are very dangerous!

Marsupials like koalas and kangaroos can be found nowhere else in the world. The reason for this is that in the beginning Australia was part of Gondwana, a huge landmass also including Africa, South America, India and Antarctica. 120 million years ago Gondwana broke up into the continents we know today. Then 50 million years ago Australia drifted away from Antarctica and became completely isolated. This isolation lasted for about 35million years, until Australia collided with the Asian plate again. By then a unique fauna had evolved, and today over 80% of the Australian mammals and reptiles, and over 90% of amphibians and fish cannot be found anywhere else in the world.

It is true that there are some dangerous animals in Australia, mostly in the oceans surrounding us. Whilst we were on holiday up on the north coast we were not able to swim in the sea because of box jellyfish, the most venomous marine animal known to mankind. They cause immense pain if you are stung, or even death. At strategic points on beaches up and down the coast, there are jars of vinegar placed by the local councils to treat box jellyfish stings. Pouring the vinegar onto the stinging cells neutralizes the sting. We kept out of the sea and used our swimming pool instead!

 

That’s all for now, but watch out for another instalment of Science Down Under.

Find out more information about Australia’s unique animals.

And speaking of Autralia, do take part in our bi-hemispherical Water Down the Plughole Experiment.

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4. Agri-Culture – What is the secret of a flock of sheep? Timing!

This week Guy Smith, who farms in Essex, has taken a break from servicing his combine to tell us what’s happening…

Early July is a test of the arable farmer’s patience. There is little else to do but watch the crops ripen and get the combine ready. For most farmers the combine is the most expensive machine on the farm with most models costing in excess of £100,000. The irony is that it only works for a few weeks of the year.

Combine harvesters take their name from the fact they “combine” the two main harvesting jobs into one machine – cutting and threshing. As little as fifty years ago these two jobs were still done separately. Crops would be cut and put into stooks (bundles) to dry in the field and then carted to the farm yard to be put into stacks. At a later date, usually in the winter, the stacks would be put through a thresher to separate the grain from the straw and the chaff. The arrival of the combine in the decade after the Second World War meant threshed grain was suddenly carted straight from the field. It was all part of the mechanisation revolution whereby the horse was replaced by the diesel engine as the power house of the farm. There were 600,000 working horses on British farms in 1940. By the mid 1960s they had more or less disappeared. In contrast, tractor numbers rose from 168,000 in 1944 to 512,000 in 1961. In the same period combine numbers went from virtually nothing to 55,000. The main effect of this was that arable farms no longer needed so much labour. Whereas in 1940 a 500 acre cropping farm would need over ten men, today it can be staffed with just one.

What this represented was quite simply a revolution and it all took place quite quickly in the space of one generation of farmers and farm workers. It might be interesting for students to consider the impact of machines on the process of food production. There were huge consequences not just in terms of efficiency and productivity but also in terms of society. Agriculture quite quickly lost its dominance in the economy of village and rural life. And it was largely down to the diesel engine.

As we now ask fundamental questions about the future of relying on the diesel engine it might be a thought provoking exercise to ask how we will be feeding ourselves in fifty years time. Will the change be as revolutionary as it has been in the last fifty?

Answer the following question right and you could win a packet of seeds from Garden Organic, the leading charity dedicated to researching and promoting organic gardening, farming and food.

How many working horses were there on British farms in 1940?

Simply email us with your correct answer and your name and address, and the words HORSEPOWER in the subject line, to planet-science.news@nesta.org.uk. The winner will be picked at random on Wednesday 16 July at 5pm.

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5. Activity of the Week:

Time within the Images

You will need:

  • 10 metre rules.
  • At least two friends who are willing to stand near a road.
  • A video camera (even your phone) where you know the number of frames per second.

What you do

  1. Find a suitable road; one that is not too busy or fast (perhaps with about one passing car a minute) and one which has a wide pavement. Outside the school is probably best as there may be speed restrictions which make this a safer area.
  2. Line your metre rules up end to end.
  3. Place your friends 10 metres apart - and make sure they stand reasonably still on the same spot - the further apart the more accurate your result will be. Of course, if they are too far apart it will take ages watching the film frame by frame so bear this in mind!
  4. Start video taping the traffic as it passes your friends.
  5. Once you have videoed a number of cars, watch the tape. For each car that passes count the number of frames it takes for the car to move from one friend to another. To be accurate you will need to note when one point on the car passes each friend (don't count when the front of the car passes the first friend and the back passes the second!).
  6. Use the number of frames taken to work out the time it took for the car to travel your known distance.

What's going on?

If your camera takes 30 frames per second you can work out the time it has taken for a car to travel the 10 metres.

Start with the number of frames and divide by 30 (or your camera's frame speed), this will give you the number of seconds it has taken a car to travel the 10 metres. To work out the speed of the car divide the distance by this time, so 10 metres / the number of seconds.

If you are videoing outside a school where the speed limit is 20 miles an hour (or about 9 metres per second) you might expect a car to take just over a second to travel the ten metres. So it is likely to be about 30 frames on your video camera.

This activity appears on the Planet Scicast site.

If you feel inspired then there’s still time to enter this year’s competition. Checkout the website for more details.

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6. Mouses at the Ready

This week we’ve got TEN two packs of June/July Flipsides to give away. Killer robots, taking a trip to Narnia and the threat of orbit junk. It’s all going on in Flipside.

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

The draw will take place at 5pm on Wednesday 9th July.

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Noticeboard

 

The Bloody Quiz

Another quiz? It’s enough to set your blood pumping! June 14 saw the anniversary of the birth of Karl Landsteiner who was born in Vienna in 1868. We’ve got a lot to thank this man for – ‘O’ yes! ‘A’ great man! So ‘B’ positive – if you get all the answers right you could win a pair of cuddly blood cells.

 

 

Yeeha! Planet Science Round Up

 Here's a few things we've launched recently:

Get Outside! Beach is our newest addition to the Parents Pages, for you and your littler ones at the seaside.

And speaking of little ones, we have got some pretty puzzles with science themes to colour and learn in our under 11 section, all curriculum linked, for school or home.

Everyone is welcome to join our Water Down the Plughole Experiment, but it's particularly useful for anyone teaching the Coriolis Force.

And if you've made a mint with our Making a Mint project please put your results into the database NOW before it's too late!
 

 

Forum for National Science and Engineering Week events

This is a forum for all those who organise National Science and Engineering Week events or have an interest in it. It will be a place for organisers and others to talk to each other, share best practice, information and resources. Anyone able to offer science outreach related resources to schools or anyone else for that matter (for free or paid for) during the Week? - it might be a good plan to join and offer your services.

 

 

Magical Memory Tour

Roll up, roll up to the Magical Memory Tour.

You can take part in a scientific study about memory. Your memories about the Beatles can help scientists learn more about how the brain functions and the way we relate to our memories. If you’re interested in the results then join in the BA Festival of Science in the European Capital of Culture, Liverpool (6 to 11 September) to find out more.
 

8. Recommended Website of the Week

Now we couldn’t witter on about the Large Hadron Collider without devoting some serious newsletter-space to it now could we? When something is described as “The fastest racetrack on the planet...” it’s not only Jeremy Clarkson who’s going to prick up his ears!

NESTA's Dr Michael Harris tells us:

“According to wikipedia, the first beams are due for injection in August 2008, with the first collisions planned to take place about two months later.

Apparently, some scientists have done a ‘safety review’ and they say that ‘everything should be fine'.”

To quote the website CERN – How the LHC works.

“The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a gigantic scientific instrument near Geneva, where it spans the border between Switzerland and France about 100 m underground. It is a particle accelerator used by physicists to study the smallest known particles – the fundamental building blocks of all things. It will revolutionise our understanding, from the miniscule world deep within atoms to the vastness of the Universe.

Two beams of subatomic particles called 'hadrons' – either protons or lead ions – will travel in opposite directions inside the circular accelerator, gaining energy with every lap. Physicists will use the LHC to recreate the conditions just after the Big Bang, by colliding the two beams head-on at very high energy. Teams of physicists from around the world will analyse the particles created in the collisions using special detectors in a number of experiments dedicated to the LHC. ”

And if that blows you away and you’re gasping for video clips then find more on the CERN site.

Either way it looks like it’s going to be quite a summer…

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.
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Winners Enclosure
Remember last time when we were offering TWO copies of Johnny Mackintosh and the Spirit of London by Keith Mansfield? The lucky winners are Matthew Popplewell from Hayling Island and Catherine Owen of Saltash. Happy reading! And don’t forget, you read it here first!
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10. Joke of the week

Why did the boy become an astronaut?
Because he was no earthly good!

What do astronauts wear to keep warm?
Apollo-neck sweaters!

Where do astronauts leave their spaceships?
At parking meteors!

Where do Martians drink beer?
At a mars bar!

How do you get a baby astronaut to sleep?
You rock-et!

These jokes came from scatty.com

Have a great week!
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If you would like to view the Planet Science Newsletter Archive click: www.planet-science.com/about_sy/news/ps_index.html You can read back issues of Wired-Up for younger teens here: http://www.planet-science.com/randomise/wiredNL/archive/ Or you can read back issues of Hay-Wire for Under 10s: http://www.planet-science.com/randomise/haywired/archive/

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