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01. THE TINY WORLD OF NANOTECHNOLOGY
Heard the one about the nano-robots of the future that will live discretely on your head, travelling up and down the individual hairs and cleaning as they go, so you never need to spend money on shampoo again? They might even be programmed to align themselves in formation at the press of a remote button, and on your command, chop each hair off at the right place, so that two seconds later you've got a brand new hairdo... Such innovations may not have been developed much beyond the realm of the imagination so far, but nanotechnology itself is one of the most exciting new areas of engineering in recent years - and the European Union would like you to know all about it. To this end, a film has been produced which explains all about nano-matters, and is currently being distributed free on DVD and online. The plot is is somewhat underwhelming, and younger viewers may enjoy it more than older ones, but if you want to know about these molecular machines of the future, this is a very useful starter kit. We've posted it up for all to see on the Planet Science website, and to view it just click to http://www.planet-science.com - and then again where it says NANOTECH MOVIE/FREE DVD. If you'd prefer a free DVD, send an email to Carla Palmieri at carla.palmieri@cec.eu.int with your name and full postal address, and she will pop one in the post for you.  |
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| 02. SPRING INTO SCIENCE for NATIONAL SCIENCE WEEK If you've not got 12-21 March 2004 circled on your calendar, then it's time to circle it now, because those are the dates of this year's National Science Week. < drumroll / fanfare > Not only is there a vast range of activities, talks and hands-on demonstrations taking place throughout the UK during these ten days, but you're warmly invited to be a part of the action yourself by staging your OWN event. Fun is its own reward of course, but if you tell the organisers what you've been up to, you'll also be sent a gold-edged sciencetastic certificate for your stairwell... The British Association for the Advancement for Science ('the BA') are the spiders at the centre of the by now vast NSW web, and their site features plenty of information about what's going on and when. The BA also provides free resources and activity ideas for National Science Week including this year's challenge pack 'Domestic science?' which is full of activities related to the science in your everyday life. Here's where you'll find it all: http://www.the-ba.net/the-ba/page.asp . Or if you prefer to phone for the pack, the number is: National Science Week 020 7019 4941 |
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| 03. SPRING INTO SCIENCE National Science Week itself may be six weeks away, but NOW is the time to get involved in one of the central parts of this year's activities: 'Spring into Science'. The challenge is to observe and record the signs of the arrival of spring in your area, by watching when buds first burst, flowers first bloom and when tadpoles first appear. Sounds like a great activity after all this grey weather... 'Spring into Science' is a collaborative UK-wide experiment being co-ordinated by National Science Week and the Woodland Trust, and the specific plants and animals to be monitored by participants have been carefully chosen so that wherever you live you'll be able to take part. For example, you could investigate your local roadside trees, the plants in your school field or the pond in your garden or nearest park. To find out what to look for, when to look for it and how to register your observations go to http://www.the-ba.net/nsw or call 020 7019 4941. |
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| 03. AN OUT-OF-THIS-WORLD OFFER Still with National Science Week... Here's a chance for GCSE and A Level students to explore space, the final frontier, via a giant robotic telescope situated on the island of Maui in Hawaii. Sadly - before you ask - no trips to sun-drenched Pacific islands are required, as astro-technology has overcome the need for such travel, but this is still a mouth-watering offer for students with an interest in planets, stars, distant galaxies and astronomy in general. Here are the details: "The Guardian Observer Newsroom and the Faulkes Telescope Project are providing GCSE and A' Level students the opportunity to observe the wonders of the universe FREE during National Science Week. "A fully robotic 25-tonne telescope has been built on the island of Maui in Hawaii to view the night sky during daytime hours in the UK. Operated over the internet, students will be able to observe exploding stars and colliding galaxies from the comfort of the lecture theatre. Objects to be observed during the event will be decided by the students and the beautiful images can be taken back to the classroom." You can read all about the telescope at http:// www.faulkes-telescope.com . There are two observing sessions being held, both at the Guardian Observer Newsroom at 60 Farringdon Road in London. Wednesday 17th March - for GCSE students Thursday 18th March - for A' level Each session lasts one hour, and spaces are still available for each. If you'd like more information or to make a booking, email Lucie Green on lucie.green@faulkes-telescope.com, or give her a ring on: 02920 875121. |
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| 04. ACTIVITY OF THE WEEK: CRYSTAL HEARTS A Valentine card from the newsagent is all very well, but whither the creativity of yesteryear? In fact, isn't it time you sent your love a beautiful crystal heart? Yes, of course it is. And here's how to make him/her a giant rocky sparkler that'd put all the diamonds in Tiffany's to shame - and in time for next Saturday too. He'll love it! She'll love it! (Well, they'll at least be chuffed you made the effort...) You will need: *Borax laundry powder (from old-fashioned style chemists) *pipecleaners *a heavy jar, with a wide neck *string * pencil *a marker pen *a glass *red food colour What to do: 1. Shape a pipecleaner into a heart shape 2. Suspend the heart with string from a pencil and hang it in the heavy jar. 3. Mark the jar to indicate where the top of the heart is (because you'll want to submerge the entire heart in solution in a minute). 4. Remove the heart and fill the jar with hot water up to the mark. 5. Add 1/3 glass of borax powder and stir until it is all dissolved. (The water needs to be just off boiling temperature, and borax is a mild irritant - so take care!) You can add red food colour at this point too which will make the heart grow pink crystals instead of white. 6. Suspend the heart in the solution making sure the pipecleaner is completely immersed in the solution and isn't touching the sides or bottom of the container. 7. As the solution cools, the crystals will begin to form on your pipecleaner. 8. Leave overnight. Remove from the solution and allow to dry. Variations: Overnight soaking will give you very thickly crystallized ornaments. If you want some of the colour of the pipe cleaner to show through, leave in the solution for less time. The crystals are somewhat fragile, so you might want to spray your finished ornament with acrylic sealer or clear spray paint to keep the crystals from falling off too quickly. If you're feeling particularly creative, you can try making other shapes - we made an arrow to go with the heart - and you can play about with what food colours you add too. Try flower shapes, or teddy bear shapes - or anything you can bend your pipecleaners into. (Make sure there aren't too many wiggly bits though as the crystals are chunky and not good on detail!) The Science: The borax powder dissolves in the warm water but as the water cools the molecules of borax crystallise out of the solution onto the pipe cleaner. If you look closely you can see their shapes. In many solids, the arrangement of the building blocks of the material (ion, atoms and molecules) can be a mixture of different structures. In crystals, however, a single arrangement 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. |
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| 05. MOUSES AT THE READY: ACTIVITY FREEBIE Two weeks ago, our featured activity was the classic and giggle-inducing demonstration in which an egg appears to be sucked inside a bottle. Judy Vincent, a primary teacher and great friend of Planet Science, has been in touch with some tips for advanced practitioners of this experiment - and a very kind offer too. She says, "I have intimate knowledge of this experiment, and eggs are great for the initial drama, BUT you can only use them once, they are pricey and it is hard to get small eggs these days. "I recommend using water bombs which are brilliant and can be re-used. I have had year 6 and 7 pupils doing the experiment themselves and it is memorable." Judy adds tantalisingly, "It is supposed to be true you can peel a banana in the same way, but you would need just the right size jar for that! It would be great to do though. It really makes them think abut the power and force of air pressure, and the noise it divine!" Further investigation into the banana trick suggests you would peel just the very top of the banana, then balance the banana with just the peeled end in the bottle neck... and then, hopefully, when it all happens, the banana will go into the bottle, and the skin will peel back and be left outside. It sounds good... but like the Loch Ness Monster, definitive proof remains elusive. So if you do attempt the banana trick - please have a camera or better still DV-cam at the ready, and send a copy in to us at Planet Science! Meanwhile, Judy has sent us 50 waterbomb balloons with which to try the original experiment. To share the fun around, we're going to give away ten lots of five waterbombs to newsletter readers - so if you'd like your name to go in the draw, send an email to anne@planet-science.com with the words I WANT A WATERBOMB! in the subject line, with a note of your name and postal address. We'll send them out next week. (Thanks again Judy!) |
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| 06. PARENTS BOOKLET You may remember we were offering free sets of homework-help booklets for parents a few weeks ago. Joanna Edwards has been in the metaphorical warehouse sorting requests and dispatching orders, and she has a message for anyone who wrote in: She says, "We were, in fact, pretty inundated so please excuse the lack of personal replies. The decisions were made on a first come first served basis so apologies if you don't receive any. Also, apologies to those who emailed in asking for less than the minimum batch of 1000 stated in the offer as these requests had to be disregarded due to delivery restrictions. "Those schools and organisations that were successful should receive their booklets in the next couple of weeks." We should also mention that the booklet is available to everyone in pdf format on the Planet Science website - click here to download it. |
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| 07. THIS WEEK IN SCIENCE HISTORY: THE FIRST PATIENT GETS PENICILLIN Today, antibiotics are in the news because many have stopped working but in 1941 the antibiotic revolution was just beginning. On February 12, 1941 Ernst Chain, Norman Heatley and Howard Florey injected the first patient with penicillin. Sir Alexander Fleming is the person who famously discovered penicillin, a chemical secreted by penicillium moulds, in 1928. But it took 13 years of work to find a safe way of using this antibiotic on humans. Two patients were initially treated with the tiny amount of the substance that could be manufactured. Unfortunately one of them, Albert Alexander, died after showing great improvement because there simply wasn't enough penicillin available. The other patient, a 15 year old boy made a full recovery and it became clear that there was finally a way to kill bacteria. This was a giant leap forward, and transformed the effectiveness of medical treatment ever after - no longer would people live in terror of even mild infections as they had done in the past. A range of other antibiotics were developed after penicillin had proved successful. These work in a variety of ways; they can kill the bacteria directly or they can disable different parts of a bacteria cell, stopping it from making a cell wall as in the case of penicillin, or from being able to turn glucose into energy, or proteins into amino acids. The result is that the bacteria cannot reproduce and it dies, our immune systems then mop up the rest. Today the future does not look as bright for antibiotics as it did in the late 1940s, even though we can easily produce as much penicillin as we need. Bacteria are simple cells that reproduce quickly, and because of this they can rapidly evolve and become immune to even our strongest antibiotics. Some now produce an enzyme called 'penicillinase' that breaks down the penicillin before it can attack the bacteria, while others have changed the way they build their cell walls so the antibiotic is ineffective. Antibiotic-resistant "superbugs" are on the increase, but the careful and limited use of antibiotics as well as the continual manufacture of new antibiotic chemicals may keep us ahead of the ever-evolving bacteria. For a look at the history of antibiotics see this site: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/background_briefings Have a look at what happens when bacteria become drug resistant, and what we can do to slow their progress: http://whyfiles.org/038badbugs/ |
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| 08. RECOMMENDED WEBSITE OF THE WEEK You can't beat a good optical illusion, and the EXPLORATORIUM, that famous science centre in San Francisco has put together a gallery of moving, grooving illusions to boggle your eyes and your brain. Watch your own hand go kinda weird, place a ghostly bird in a cage or explore the mystery of the fading dot... If it all proves too much, just shout "I'm Confused Get Me Out of Here!" - and relax in the knowledge that scientists don't understand quite how some of those illusions work either. They're very effective though. (But you will need Shockwave downloaded to see them.) Here's the link: http://www.exploratorium.edu/exhibits/f_exhibits.html And so to polar bears. Ever wondered what they do all winter? To enable us to find out, and learn more about the bears at the same time, the WWF together with the Norweigan Polar Institute, have been doing a spot of tracking. Radio tracking that is, of two radio-tagged bears, Lena and Yana, and they've been following their progress throughout the winter. The site provides information on polar bears' lifestyles in general, and an ID check on both of the two females stars of the show. As you read through the descriptions of where they've been going, and the challenges they've encountered, you get a vivid sense of the "real time" life of a polar bear, which is naturally slightly different to the edited highlights that make up natural history programmes. The maps could be more informative, and you might find yourself wishing that there could somehow be more photos of bears from week to week. But it's an interesting site, and a good companion to all those static web-cam sites that show the pics but don't go anywhere! Here's the address for the POLAR BEAR TRACKER: http://www.panda.org/polarbears/ |
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| 09. JOKE OF THE WEEK Here we go... A woman goes to the cinema with her dog and on the way out she's stopped by a fellow-cinemagoer. He says to her, "I'm sorry to bother you, but I noticed that your dog watched the film all the way through, crying at the sad bits, hiding during the scary bits and laughing during the funny bits. Don't you find that a bit odd?" "Yes, I did," replied the woman "It's very odd. He hated the book."  That's all for this week. If you have any news, ideas, recommended websites, jokes or indeed freebie offers, please send them straight through to Anne McNaught on anne@planet-science.com. Have a great week! |
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