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01. GET YOUR LAUGHING GEAR ROUND THIS
The April Dino Quiz is now closed and the winners have been selected - scroll down to find out if you're one of them... Meanwhile, as May peeks round the corner, the new month's quiz has jumped in to fill the gap and has now opened for business. It's called the LAUGHING GEAR QUIZ, and it's been created in honour of National Smile Week (May the 16th to 22nd). The questions, gnashurally enough, are therefore all about the mouth, the teeth and the smiling muscles that make us who we are. So, if you think you know your halitosis from your halleberry, and fancy trying to estimate how many bacteria swap sides during a big long kiss, click now to: http://www.planet-science.com/wired/comp_quiz/05_04_Germs/ You stand to win three cuddly toys in the shape of common mouth-microbes (sore throat microbe, bad breath microbe and of course kissing disease/glandular fever microbe - the toys are much cuter than the real thing, in case you're wondering). And we're even throwing in a £10 Boots voucher so you can stock up on toothpaste and floss.  |
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| 02. ACTIVITY OF THE WEEK: SENSITIVE TISSUES You may like to think you're an all-over sensitive type of person, but if so this week's activity could surprise you! You will need:
1. Take the first card and attach a paper clip to it with one end of the wire pointing outwards. 2. Take the second card - on this you want to stick two paperclips pointing out like the other one, with the points about 0.5 cm apart. Repeat with the other three cards, positioning the paperclips 1 cm, 2 cm and 4 cm apart respectively. You should now have 5 cards for poking your volunteer! 3. To work out how sensitive the skin is on various parts of the body, ask your volunteer to shut their eyes. 4. Now chose one of the cards and touch (don't jab) the skin with the paperclips on one of the cards. If you use a card with two paper clips make sure both touch the skin at the same time. 5. Ask the volunteer how many paper clips they can feel - one or two? Try testing the skin on the back of the hand, the palm of the hand, lower arm, upper arm, legs and feet and see whether they can guess the right number of paperclips. What's going on? Your volunteer is not always going to be able to guess how many paperclips are touching their skin, because some parts of the body are much more sensitive than others. These sensitive parts have more of the nerve endings which send signals to the brain when they have been triggered by a touch. While the brain can feel two points only 0.5 cm apart on the palm of the hand, down in one's lower leg, it may only perceive two points if they are as wide apart as 4 cm! In normal life this lack of super-sensitivity isn't apparent because after all you don't need sensitive legs to be able to walk, whereas you certainly do for touching and holding objects (and other living things). 2b. GLITTERY IMPROVEMENT TO COCOA CRATERS ACTIVITY A long time ago now, we featured the activity we like to call 'Cocoa Craters', in which you use kitchen ingredients to model the surface of a moon or planet, and then use marbles to replicate the effect of meteors impacting on the surface. Full instructions for 'Cocoa Craters' can be found at: http://www.planet-science.com/outthere/index.html?page=/outthere/rss/crater.html Peter Bailey, from Baskerville School in Birmingham, a special school for autistic children, has been in touch however, to suggest an improved and sparklier version... In Peter's version, what you need is a covering of glitter on top of the flour (instead of the cocoa powder we used.) The pupils then use different sizes and weights of marbles and ballbearings, and drop them onto the surface from different heights. The flour on its own, he says, does indicate differences in the impacts, but they can be difficult to observe and measure clearly. Not so when a glittery layer is added. The kids loved it, he says, and the inspectors did too! Thanks Peter. |
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| 03. MOUSES AT THE READY: FOCUS MAGAZINE + FREE BOOKS Stand by your desks! If you're at a school and enjoy a regular peruse through the glossy, colourful window on the world that is Focus magazine, we have a great offer for you. As you may know already, Focus magazine features all sorts of subjects that are relevant to school science and technology, and from time to time the publishers run special deals for schools so that they can receive the magazine for less than its cover price. Their latest offer for schools is for a one- or two-year subscription at discount rates, plus a free copy of the DK '1000 Inventions & Discoveries' book. Read all about it at: http://www.focusmag.co.uk/schools.asp Meanwhile, because they're very generous, they've offered Planet Science five free 1-year subscriptions to give away to newsletter readers AND five runner-up prizes of £20+ worth of up-to-the-minute science books. If you fancy getting into the draw to win, all you have to do is send an email entitled FOCUS FOR ME! in the title, and a note of your name and address in the email. The draw will take place on Thursday 6th May at 5pm sharp Good luck! |
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| 04. FANTASTIC FREEBIES FOR GREEN-FINGERED SCHOOLS Here's another amazing offer for schools - but unlike the Focus one, it's been there all along, you just might have missed it, like we had until now... It's The Royal Horticultural Society's Schools Membership scheme, a brilliant source of information, advice and even free seeds, and it's available to all schools in the UK for just an 84p administration fee. Members receive a specially-written termly newsletter; priority (though not free) bookings for school visits to RHS Gardens; reduced rates for teachers, support staff and governors attending RHS INSET courses; an email hotline for advice, comments or questions and a copy of the monthly RHS magazine, "The Garden". On top of all that, in January members are sent a directory of available seeds that have been gathered at Wisley Gardens for RHS distribution. They can then choose their top ten, and will receive a packet of each one free in the spring, just in time to plant them. FREE SEEDS FROM WISLEY GARDENS - how good is that? If you want to find out more, it's all on the RHS website at: http://www.rhs.org.uk/education - just follow the links to the Schools Membership Scheme. Alternatively you can email Jennie Beaver on jenniebe@rhs.org.uk or phone her on 01483 212432. Go on, she's waiting to hear from you! |
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| 05. WIN A TRIP TO THE B.A. FESTIVAL OF SCIENCE Exeter's a lovely place to visit any day of the year, but there's an extra special reason why you might want to be there between 4th and 10th September, and that's because it's the venue for this year's BA Festival. As you may know already, the BA (or British Association for the Advancement of Science) runs a festival every year, and it always receives loads of coverage in the press because it brings together a vast number of scientists and researchers to give talks, and run demonstrations and other scientific 'happenings'. The subjects covered are diverse, and range from fossils, stem cells, the environment, scientific magic tricks, to policy issues, research and crystal-ball-gazing for the future... The festival always has a designated theme and this year it's 'The responsibility of being a scientist'. With that in mind, the BA's Young People's Programme is keen to find out what the UK's under-20 year olds reckon scientists should work on in the coming 50 years, and they've launched a competition to find out. There are two categories; a poster competition for 11-16 year olds, and a writing challenge for 16-19 year olds. Winners will get the chance to come to Exeter in September, and to meet and mingle with the crème de la scientific crème. Furthermore, their school or club will receive a year's free membership of the BA Science Communicators award scheme. Read all about it on the BA's lovely new website at: http://www.the-ba.net/the-ba/News/_YPPCompetitionNews.htm - and pass it on to any under-20s you think would be interested... |
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| 06. THIS WEEK IN SCIENCE HISTORY: THE 4-MINUTE MILE As you may already have spotted in the papers, it will be fifty years ago on May 6, that Roger Bannister ran a that magic mile in 3 minutes, 59.4 seconds, beating the four-minute barrier. Today the record for running a mile has been lowered by Hicham El Guerrouj to just 3 minutes 43.13 seconds, which means that he was able to run at a staggering 26 kilometres per hour over the distance. Of course people can run even faster that this over shorter distances. Tim Montgomery currently holds the Olympic world record for 100 metres, running it in 9.78 seconds, reaching an average speed of 36.8 kilometres per hour. What is about some people that allows them to run at these super-fast speeds, while others are better suited to the long moderate running needed to complete a marathon. In both cases it takes training to develop muscles and the blood vessels, heart and lungs to supply enough oxygen to the muscles, but even with the same training some people are just faster. The secret lies in two different types of muscle fibres - slow twitch and fast twitch. Generally we have about half of each, but the more fast twitch fibres you have the faster you may be able to run, with the proper training. Conversely, endurance athletes have a higher proportion of slow twitch muscle fibres. While fast twitch fibres react more quickly, they also run out of fuel more quickly. They mainly burn sugar as their fuel source, which is quick to do but short-lived. Slow twitch fibres react more slowly but can refuel on the go, burning fat instead of sugar as their continual energy source. Some people may be born with a higher percentage of one or the other type, giving them a greater advantage in certain sports events. While few of us could run a mile in under 4 minutes, a healthy balance of both fast twitch and slow twitch muscles allows us to get on with our everyday life. That may be using our fast twitch muscles to run for the bus or our slow twitch muscles to run to work if we miss it! To find out more about fast twitch and slow twitch muscles have a look at this article: http://sportsmedicine.about.com/cs/exercisephysiology/a/aa080901a.htm If you want more information on sport science start here: http://www.exploratorium.edu/sports/ |
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| 07. RECOMMENDED WEBSITES OF THE WEEK Here's a very simple, but easy to understand guide to the secret world of atoms... It's called ALL ABOUT ATOMS and is a 'homework helper' featured on the site of the US physics research organisation, the Jefferson Lab. It won't take anyone too long to explore, but the primary-school-size text and graphics make for easy digestion of the main facts. http://education.jlab.org/atomtour/index.html If you navigate back to the homepage of the education zone at http://education.jlab.org/ you can see that there are all sorts of student and teacher resources on offer... but here's one particular recommendation: WHO WANTS TO WIN A MILLION DOLLARS? - The Science Game This is not so much inspired by Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, as completely reincarnated in its image. And it's great! If you're familiar with the TV show, you'll know exactly what to do. Faced with a question (and yes the ha ha ha so very easy ones are at the beginning, but you may not be laughing long) you have the choice of A, B, C or D, plus three lifelines: 50/50, 'Poll the Lab' or 'Ask An Expert'. Having selected your answer, you must then confirm that this is your FINAL ANSWER. Tricky, very tricky... and what's more they've disabled the 'back' button. (How come we know that? Hmmmmm - don't ask - suffice to say they're not keen on people trying to retake their answers.) All you need to complete the nerve-shredding is a tension-building musical backdrop, a bright spotlight shining on you, and a cheque for all that money just dangling slightly out of reach... |
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| 08. AWKWARD QUESTION OF THE WEEK Put the kettle on, it's time for this answer to last week's brainteaser... Here's a reminder of what the question was: Susan is exhausted - what she needs is a nice cup of tea. She has managed to fill her cup with hot water but just can't find the energy to get the tea bag. Her long suffering friend, Laura, fetches a tea bag for her and dangles it in the cup Susan's holding. But Susan now starts to complain about the cup being too heavy now. Laura finally cracks and tells her it couldn't possibly be heavier since she is still holding the tea bag by the string. Is the cup heavier? Or is Susan just a whinger? (OK, she's definitely a whinger - but is she RIGHT?!) And here's the answer: When the tea bag is placed in the cup it displaces some water (it also absorbs a little too). The tea bag experiences a buoyant force - pushing it up but not quite allowing it to float, so Laura thinks she is still taking the full weight of the tea bag. She is not! Susan is now taking the weight of the water in the cup AND taking the buoyant force because, thanks to Isaac Newton, we know that there is an equal and opposite for every force. As the buoyant force pushes the tea bag up, the opposite force acts downwards on Susan's arm, keeping things balanced. So unfortunately for Laura, Susan is correct, she is taking some of the weight of the tea bag too. Time for Laura to find a new friend who doesn't complain as much and who isn't right all the !$!(*$ time! And so to this week's question: A wildlife photographer leaves his tent one morning to look for wild bears. He walks 10 km south. He finds nothing so he turns 90º and walks east for 10 km. Still no sign of any wild bears, so he turns 90º and walks directly north for 10 km. He is surprised to find himself back at his tent. How did he end up back at his tent by travelling 10 km south, 10 km east and 10 km north? |
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| 09. WINNERS And the winners of the April Dragon Quiz were: Anya Longfield of Fairfield in Stockton on Tees, Ian Nicholson of Glasgow, John Collins of Solihull, Rob Turner of Sutton, Asher Freeman of Warwick and Keren Worsnop of Chippenham. Congratulations to all of you, your Dino Dig kits are on their way...! |
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| 10. JOKES OF THE WEEK A customer was continually bothering the waitress in a restaurant; first asking for the air conditioning be turned up because he was too hot, then asking for it to be turned down cause he was too cold, and up again, down again, and so on for about half an hour. Surprisingly, the waitress was very patient, walking back and forth and never once getting angry. Finally, a customer who'd been observing all this asked why she didn't throw the pest out. "It's all the same to me," she replied with a wink, "We don't even have an air conditioner."  That's all for now, except to say a massive thank you to Alison Begley who has supplied so many great features for the newsletter over the last few months, but is now putting her feet up for a little while. Good luck with everything Alison, and thanks again!! Meanwhile, 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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