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01. OH PLEASE! MORE ANTICS FROM FAMEVILLE
It's out today: the third and final edition of OH PLEASE!, your Planet Science guide to the science of rich and famous lifestyles. This month our undercover investigators have been taking a good look at another five unnatural activities got up to by glamorous people. What works, and what's just for those with more money than scientific understanding? Find out by clicking here. (The new edition is the one with the exceptionally glamorous lady in pink on the front...) Features include: JET LAG: are some hardened globetrotters simply not susceptible to jet lag? THE GYM: can you really stop your body from ageing? COLONIC IRRIGATION: It's so unnatural, it must do some good, right? Well... TELEPHOTO LENSES: Paparazzi physics in action and TEETH WHITENING: That'll put a zingy-white smile on your face!  |
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| 02. PLAYGROUND PAINTING Calling all primary teachers. Have you got any groovy science related playground painting going on in your schoolyard? Katie Walsh, the editor of the Planet Science website, is planning a special feature for the forthcoming section on our site dedicated to primary schools, and she wants to kick off with some successful examples of painted playgrounds in action. Like yours, perhaps?! If you have any great paintings, please email her about them - and if you happen to have a photo to hand, that would be even better. She'd also like to know about any crazy games you (well ok, your kids...) play on the paintings. Email her on katie.walsh@nesta.org.uk, and put the word 'PLAYGROUND' in the subject line please! |
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| 03. ACTIVITY OF THE WEEK: THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING EGG Have you still got your gloriously globby 'naked egg' from last week? Probably just as well if not, as they do pong a bit - but here's an activity that builds on the achievements of the naked egg, so for an experimental mega-dose you could do both, one after another ... You will need: 1 small jar or glass 1 'naked egg' as per last week Some golden syrup (or a really, really sweet mixture of sugar dissolved in water.) What to do: 1. Gently place the naked egg in the jar. Fill the jar about half-full with golden syrup or sugar solution. 2. Look at the size of the egg and commit to memory (or paper). Now go away for two hours... 3. Come back and observe what's happening. 4. Now leave the egg in the jar for three days. You may want to change the syrup or sugar solution after a day for a fresh batch. After three days, remove the egg and gently rinse it off in fresh water. 5. Check out what's happened. Weird, huh? 6. Put your egg in a glass of fresh water and let it sit overnight. Check out the egg once more... bet you didn't know eggs could do THAT?! What's going on: The membrane that surrounds the egg is what's known as "semi-permeable". This means that some substances, such as water molecules, can pass into and out of the egg while other substances, like the proteins in the egg white, cannot. Obviously, the shell would normally provide a barrier between the insides of the egg and the outside world, but once the shell is removed, water easily moves into or out of the egg through the membrane. The concentration of water molecules in the sugar solution is less than inside the egg. When you put the egg into the sugar solution, the water molecules move from inside the egg into the sugar solution to try and make the concentration of water on each side the same. This movement of water makes the egg shrink. If you then place the shrunken egg in pure water then some water molecules will move back into the egg and make it swell up again. Amazing... (But apologies in advance if this activity puts you off eating eggs for life!) |
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| 04. MOUSES AT THE READY: OUR DYNAMIC EARTH You may have read about James Hutton, the 'father of modern geology', in the news this week, as it appears he may have formulated the idea of evolution by natural selection some years before Charles Darwin did. Both men certainly worked and studied in Edinburgh at a time when the city was bubbling over with scientific interest and investigations during the Enlightenment, so ... who knows? Wherever Darwin's theories fit into the picture though, Edinburgh - and Hutton's - geological legacy continues to this day in several research centres around the city. And for visitors with a geological interest, a great place to visit is OUR DYNAMIC EARTH (http://www.dynamicearth.co.uk/). For which we have some family tickets to give away, so if you're in the Edinburgh area: stand by your bed! Our Dynamic Earth is housed in an exceedingly funky-looking structure nestled in at the bottom of Arthur's Seat (which is rocky outcrop, just to clarify for anyone not familiar with Edinburgh!). And the insides are just as good as the outsides... The idea is that visitors of all ages can take a virtual journey of discovery from the time of the Big Bang to the present day, exploring in particular the history of our own lovely planet, Earth. Thanks to all sorts of cutting edge technology and creativity, time travellers will be, for example, shaken by earthquakes, brought face-to-face with boiling lava, flown over glaciers and even forced to choose between our own evolution and extinction (gulp). Diving beneath the oceans in the in-house submarine, getting caught in a tropical rainstorm and feeling the chill of polar ice are also options for advanced adventurers... Fancy it?! We have three family passes on offer and all you have to do to get into the draw to win one, is send an email to anne@planet-science.com entitled DYNAMIC DAY OUT, and including a note of your name and address. The draw will take place at 5pm on Wednesday 22nd October. |
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| 05. MORE FREEBIES: CHRISTMAS LECTURES IN WINCHESTER Christmas must be around the corner if there are Yuletide adverts already sneaking their way down the daytime TV chimney and onto our screens... Certainly INTECH, Winchester's interactive science and technology centre, would like you to know about their forthcoming series of Christmas Lectures, and maybe sign up for a few - and definitely maybe put your name in the draw for some freebies. There are three lectures: 26th November: ELECTRIFYING MAGNETS, presented by Ian Dunne and featuring all sorts of visual wow-factors... 10th December: THE NATURE OF TELEVISION, presented by Bryson Gore - about the multi-morphing future of the goggle-box in your living room. 17th December: THE SCIENCE OF CHRISTMAS, all kinds of everything that remind us of the Festive Season... A ticket for each lecture will cost you £5.50 per adult or £2.50 for a child - but if you book for all three, you'll get one free. Yes free, free, FREE! But if it's free tickets you fancy, you'd be mad not to enter our prize draw as we have two 4-person family passes on offer. To win, just answer the following question: Colour television pictures are made up of which three colours? a. Black, white and cerise b. Red, yellow and blue c. red, green and blue Please send your email, entitled INTECH CHRISTMAS TIX to anne@planet-science.com with your answer and a note of your name and address. The draw will take place at 5pm on Wednesday at the same time as the other one... |
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| 06. THIS WEEK IN SCIENCE HISTORY: 13 YEARS SINCE THE FIRST LUNG TRANSPLANT It's always good to carry a donor card just in case the worst happens, but in some cases it's also possible for an individual to donate some organs and still continue with a normal life...? This week's featured anniversary falls on the 25th October, when in 1990 Dr Vaughn Starnes performed the first lung transplant ever from a living donor. So HOW did he do that? We can't live without our lungs, but each lung is made of a number of segments or lobes, and we don't need all of these. In a normal set of lungs there are three lobes on the right and two on the left. In a lung transplant operation, a lobe is taken from the lungs of one or two donors and these are transplanted as if they were full set of lungs into the patient. Transplant surgery has historically proved very difficult, but these operations been very successful so far. It seems that they may have fewer complications and reduce the risk of rejection by the patient's body. As there's a shortage of organ donors, living donors more necessary than ever so this is an extremely significant development. There are drawbacks, however, because even though these transplants may prove to be better for the recipient, TWO healthy people have to undergo an operation, and this may be too much of a risk for some. Because of this, living donor lung transplants may always be the final option and the last hope. Here are some useful websites, if you'd like to know more: For all you want to know about these operations have a look here: http://health.discovery.com/centers/surgery/surgeons/starnes.html For more about how your lungs work, have a look here: http://www.learn.co.uk/default.asp?WCI=Unit&WCU=179 And for information about lungs and lots of other bits of the body check out: http://kidshealth.org/kid/body/lungs_noSW.html |
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| 07. RECOMMENDED WEBSITES OF THE WEEK This week, the spotlight falls on Asda's colourful, resource-packed site 'BIG HEALTHY BODY'. The focus of all the activities and information-nuggets is keeping fit and healthy, through good diet, plenty of exercise, and of course personal hygiene. There are interactive areas for children to explore, like 'You Have to Admire Your Guts', a demo that shows the digestive journey that turns food into poo (complete with sound FX), ideas and instructions for classroom activities, and printable sheets and other information that parents can use at home. You can find it on the Asda homepage at: http://www.asda.co.uk/ or you can click straight there from: http://195.92.138.215/interactive.htm . |
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| 08. NURSERY RHYME CHALLENGE Here's a new Planet Science initiative to bring science ... into the nursery. And we're looking for some junior gems to feature on our website, so if you're feeling poetic, here's a challenge for you! The idea is to start a nursery rhyme in the normal way, but finish it with a poetic flourish of a science nature. Feel free to pick any rhyme for the treatment - and here are a couple of examples that Katie Walsh (Planet Science web guru) knocked up for you earlier... Incy wincy spider climbed up the spout Being an arachnid he used eight legs no doubt! ... and here's another one to set your creative juices flowing... Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water The force of friction let Jack down and Jill came tumbling after. We're thinking you can probably do better... so don't delay, get rhyming today. Any that end up being featured on our website will win a tenner's worth of book tokens. So get your thinking cap on, flex your digits, send your thoughts to katie.walsh@nesta.org.uk with the words SCIENCE RHYMES in the subject line. |
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| 09. JOKE OF THE WEEK A man had a problem getting up for work in the mornings and was frequently reprimanded for being late. It got so bad that he went to see a doctor who gave him a pill to take at bedtime. After taking the pill, the man slept soundly, woke up refreshed, had a leisurely breakfast and went in to work. "Hi, I feel great," he told the boss, "I think all my timekeeping problems are a thing of the past." "Fantastic," replied his boss, "but where were you yesterday?" That's all from the vineyards. Any contributions for future newsletters, should be sent to Anne McNaught on anne@planet-science.com. Have a great week, bearing in mind the wise words of Groucho Marx: "Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana." Bye for now! |
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