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01. IT'S NOT ME, IT'S MY SWEET TOOTH...
The final installment tn our scientific guide to New Year-New Me resolutions. "This year I'm going to eat more healthily" ie. I'm going to eat more vegetables and less chocolate cake. A popular avowal around this time of year. The problem is, to most people vegetables just don't taste as good as sweet sugary desserts... Why oh why does it have to be like this? Alison Begley, our self-improvement science guru, has just come back from another of her 10km runs and has postponed her marshmallow-topped cup of creamy hot chocolate to bring us the final edition of her Resolution Trilogy. Here's what she says: The tastebuds on our tongues are sensitive to different chemicals and provide us with our four main types of taste: sweet, salty, bitter and sour. Acids, like lemon juice, are sour; sugars are sweet; salts of course are salty and bitter tastes come from alkaline foods, including many vegetables. Tasting and enjoying food, however, requires more than just our tastebuds; we also need our noses. We smell food before and after we put it in our mouths, and our noses are equipped to detect nearly 10,000 different odours. It's the combination of taste and smell allows us to identify what we are eating. Without smell (allegedly) an onion tastes like an apple. Feel free to try that one out for yourself! Taste, as one of our five senses, is not just there to help us enjoy our food. We've also evolved taste as a means of finding out instantly whether a food might be poisonous. Poisonous things tend to be bitter, so we've developed an in-built aversion to bitter tastes. Since few plants want to be eaten, many - including many human-healthy vegetables - contain these bitter chemicals which make the taste unpleasant. Conversely, our body knows that sweet foods (eg. berries) will give us energy so it says "yes, please" to such tastes. If the sweet food also has some fat thrown in, that's great because the fat lets us savour the taste for longer. Both of which preferences are all very well if you're a stoneage person trying to survive in hostile conditions - but a slightly different story when you're in the Cakes & Biscuits aisle in Safeway... Overall, the unfortunate result is that we avoid bitter, healthy vegetables and prefer to eat high calorie sweet food. If you want to find out more about taste and smell, here are a couple of good websites: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programme1 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programme2 Could you be a supertaster? Recent research has shown that some people have more taste buds than others and this makes them particularly sensitive to bitter tastes. Supertasters tend to hate vegetables, but they also avoid very sweet food too. Try the experiment on this page to find out if supertasting could be your excuse...http://www.sciencenet.org.uk And you can see just how much smell affects how you taste food by trying this experiment:  |
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| 02. HELP FOR PARENTS! Last summer Planet Science produced a small (A5) booklet designed to help parents understand their children's science homework. Most of these (2.5 million!) were distributed through magazines or store publications but due to a technical hitch we have about 70,000 left. Would you like some? Or in fact, would you like quite a few? Due to delivery restrictions there must be a minimum of 1000 sent to each address, so this offer is probably of more interest to organisations than individuals. If you think your school/science centre/festival/parents group would benefit from a batch of these leaflets then send an e-mail to joanna.edwards@nesta.org.uk with the words 'PARENTS BOOKLET' in the subject line. The booklets will be provided and delivered free of charge but this offer is made on a first come first served basis. |
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| 03. ACTIVITY OF THE WEEK: TEACH YOUR GRANDMOTHER TO SUCK AN EGG (INTO A BOTTLE) Well, the eggs aren't actually 'sucked', and you don't have to have any of your family involved at all ... but all the same this is a great demo, which just needs a spot of adult supervision to ensure it goes with a bang! You will need: * 1 peeled, hard-boiled egg * 1 glass bottle with a wide opening (the opening should be just a little smaller than the width of the egg. Product placement aside, you may find a Sn*pple bottle works well!) Make sure the bottle is empty, and dry. * Matches * An adult helper * An audience! What to do: 1. Place the egg on top of the bottle to demonstrate that the egg will not fit through the opening. 2. Light two matches. 3. While the matches are burning, quickly lift the egg from the bottle and drop the burning matches into the bottle. Immediately replace the egg. 4. The egg might jiggle about a bit, but don't touch it... just watch what happens next! 5. Egg suddenly shoots inside the bottle. People will burst out laughing - there's just something so bizarre about the way it happens - and the sound effects can be quite good too. 6. Accept the riotous applause graciously. What's going on? The matches inside the bottle heat up the air in there. Heated air expands, so this hot air has a slightly greater pressure than the air outside the bottle. Some of the bottled air pushes its way past the egg to get out - which is what makes it jiggle about a bit. But when the air in the bottle has cooled, which happens not long after the matches go out, the air contracts again. This means that the air inside the bottle now has a LOWER pressure than the air outside. The egg appears to get sucked into the bottle, but in reality, it's the outside air pressure that pushes it inside. Either way, it's a demo that brings the house down! |
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| 04. BIG SCHOOLS' BIRDWATCH Just a quick mention for the RSPB's 'Big Garden Birdwatch' - claimed to be the world's largest bird event. It's not too late to get involved. The idea is that throughout the UK, participants will monitor the avian activity in their own garden for 60 minutes on either Saturday or Sunday, recording the types and number of feathered-friends who come visiting, and then submitting their results to the RSPB. Full details of the event - which you should read before you begin - and an online results form can be found on the RSPB's website at: http://www.rspb.org.uk/birdwatch/. Need a bit of help identifying those dainty little ones with the yellow flash on them, or that kind of browny one with the speckly front? Then have a guess and check it against the information in the A-Z guide helpfully provided on the RSPB site at: http://www.rspb.org.uk/birds/guide/ |
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| 05. MOUSES AT THE READY: FOR BLACKFOOT INDIANS IN MANCHESTER This week, thanks to the generosity of our friends at The Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester, we have some free tickets on offer for an evocative journey into the culture and history of North America's Blackfoot Indians. 'Blackfoot Indians. Nitsitapiisinni: Our Way of Life' is the full title of a world-touring exhibition which originated at the Glenbow Museum in Canada and will be making its only UK appearance this year in Manchester from 30 January - 6 June 2004. As you'll discover if you visit the exhibition, in Blackfoot folklore, the shape of the circle signifies the interconnectedness of life, and so the exhibition is based on a series of circular displays. Over 200 artefacts have been brought over, and have been combined with audiovisual displays and other images to produce colourful, atmospheric nuggets of Blackfoot life and culture. The organisers say, "The Blackfoot people use stories to learn about the world around them and the theme of storytelling runs through the exhibition. A tipi reveals Blackfoot ceremony and an imposing buffalo is the centre-piece to a display on 'Our Land'. Traditional costume, story robes and beautiful quill and beadwork add to the distinctiveness of the display and a reconstruction of a reserve house and school will inform visitors about present-day lifestyles. "Using audio stations, visitors can find out about Blackfoot life before contact with Europeans; understand how contact with Western settlers forever altered their lives and discover how the present day Blackfoot descendants are preserving their culture and traditions." Arriving with the exhibition will be Sandra Crazy Bull, from Glenbow Museum, and two Elders from the Blackfoot community; Andy Black Water and Frank Weasel Head. They will be working with the museum's in-house presenters to produce a programme of public events featuring traditional Blackfoot crafts, dancing and storytelling. Tickets will be on sale for £4 with £2.50 concessions, but we have four 4-person family tickets on offer - and of course if you visit the Blackfoot exhibition you can also spend time in the rest of this wonderful museum (check it out at: http://www.msim.org.uk/) Fancy a set? Then send an email with the words BLACKFOOT TICKETS PLEASE to anne@planet-science.com. The draw will be made next Thursday at 5pm prompt. |
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| 06. OXFORDSHIRE SCIENCE FESTIVAL If you're in or around the Oxfordshire area, you should know that from tomorrow until 8th February, there's a science festival going on - and you are more than welcome to get involved! This is the thirteenth year in which the festival has been held, and the programme of events is busier than ever. Talks, activities, demonstrations and indeed a packed schedule of pub quizzes have been organised throughout the two weeks, as have a number of more business-oriented events. You can peruse the full programme at: http://www.oxtrust.org.uk/ The only thing that you can't go to is Adam Hart-Davis's lecture, because that's sold out. But interesting man though he is, who needs Adam Hart-Davis when you can try your hand at digital photo-transforming; learn about light, fireflies and rainbows; discover what 'chemical weapons' really are and about CWs in the non-human world; investigate colour in art through the ages, and challenge your brain cells at the White Hard in Headington (8pm 27th Jan in case you're interested!)? Exactly. Have a look and make your bookings... And as part of the Oxfordshire Science Festival: |
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| 06a. THE MILLION DICE ROLL How many sixes do you get when you throw ten dice? How many would you expect...? Wherever you are, the Oxford Trust, who are the organisers of the O.S.F, are inviting primary and secondary school groups, families and any other interested adults, to take part in the Million Dice Roll mass experiment. The experiment is all about chance and probability, and about getting a large, like, HUGE amount of data together. The data of course are the results of the dice rolls, and as a participant, all you need are ten dice, a pencil to jot down your results, and access to a computer to log your data when you've finished. Here's where you can read all about it: http://www.oxtrust.org.uk/dice/. Good fun whoever you are, but it you're a teacher and fancy using the experiment as a class event, you can also find teachers' notes, ideas for follow-on activities, and plenty of links to extra resources on the site at http://www.oxtrust.org.uk/dice/taking_part.php |
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| 07. RECOMMENDED WEBSITES OF THE WEEK Love 'em or hate 'em you can't ignore lichens... Here's a website we came across this week which may be of interest to teachers looking for a nature-based project that can be done throughout the year, in virtually any location in the country. The stars of the show are the lichens that love to live on our walls, tree trunks, pavements, gravestones and many, many other places. Working together with the National Grid for Learning, The British Lichen Society have put together this set of inspirational ideas for turning lichens into lessons, with project plans for all age groups, teachers resources, printable worksheets and extra reading recommendations. The site doesn't look too great, it has to be said, but the projects do. And isn't it time you had more lichen in your life? Here's the link: http://www.thebls.org.uk/proj.htm * * * * * Our second website recommendation is of a much more serious nature. Miss Marble has had an enormous diamond stolen from her home, and the police need help in analysing the DNA found at the crime scene to work out which of the suspects dunnit. Diamond Del, Light-fingered Lil and Bouffant Bobby are their names - and although they all sound just a little bit sus, only one of them is guilty of nobbling that rock... Work your way though a really colourful, fun game from BBCi to learn a little about DNA sampling, and the process of modern crime scene investigation. Here's where you'll find the THIEF GAME: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/genes/dna_detectives |
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| 08. WINNERS WINNERS WINNERS Sorry for the delay in announcing the winners of the Southern Hemisphere Quiz. They were: Vicky Sully from Altrincham, Lisa Linsdell from the Isle of Wight and Rob Turner from Sutton. Each wins a disco ball with revolving engine. Wooh! As for last week's competition to win family passes to ThinkTank in Birmingham, the winners are: Cath Jones of Shrewsbury, Miss J Oldfield of Birmingham, P Sargent of Birmingham, Gaynor McClarey of Worcester, and George Price of Soham. Congratulations to all of you, your tickets are on their way... have a groovy day out! |
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| 09. JOKES OF THE WEEK OK, that's enough fun. Time for some jokes And thank you very much to Mary Smith, who opens the batting with the following: "You heard on the news that America is going to send another manned ship to the moon didn't you? Well they had also thought of opening a pub there to make the astronauts feel at home, but then realised that it wouldn't have any atmosphere." Boom boom. Thanks Mary - apparently her pupils enjoy the newsletter jokes every week (!) so here's a classroom one they might like: Teacher: How much is half of 8? Pupil: Up and down or across? Teacher: What do you mean? Pupil: Well, up and down makes a 3 or across the middle leaves a 0! And finally, a joke for dog-lovers: Upon entering a small village grocery, a stranger noticed a sign saying DANGER! BEWARE OF DOG! posted on the glass door. Inside a harmless old mutt was asleep on the floor beside the cash register. The stranger says to the shopkeeper, "Is that the dog customers are supposed to beware of?" "Yep, that's him," the shopkeeper replies. The amused stranger raises an eyebrow, "That certainly doesn't look like a dangerous dog to me. Why in the world would you post that sign?" The shopkeeper replies, "Because, before I posted that sign, people kept tripping over him." * * * * * And that's it, they think it's all over, and it is now. If you have any contributions for future newsletters please send them in to Anne McNaught on anne@planet-science.com. Have a great week! |
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