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01. FORCEFUL PHYSICS IN ACTION...
Talk about having leverage. Lenny 'The Spring' Load, previously holed up for attempting to distend the course of justice, was sprung from jail last week - using a catapult. Fortunately he has since been apprehended by the combined efforts of Inspector Fulcrum and his green green grass, Freddie 'Fingers' Force. Load can now be sure of going down for an even longer stretch - with no chance of an early release this time. * * * * * * OK, and we've just broken every one of John Clees' Three Laws of Comedy, namely: no puns, no puns, no puns. But it's all in the interests of promoting science, Your Honour... The topic is LEVERS and FORCE, and a whole new section of the Planet Science website has just arrived and is awaiting your earliest attention in our new Under-11s section. You'll not only get to meet the aforementioned crims and find out the inside story on their nefarious activities, but there's a factfile on levers and how they work, plenty of things to try for yourself and special set of activity ideas for teachers. Here's where it's all ratchetting up... NB You'll need to scroll along to the left (unconventional but quite comic-strip style groovy, huh?!)  |
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| 02. ACTIVITY OF THE WEEK: CATAPULT SHOOTER By way of an appetiser for the LEVERS section, this week's activity is all about exploring their power, when used in conjunction with foodstuffs! You will need: * An ice-lolly stick * A metre stick or tape * Cheerios or other cereal * A pencil * Small cups What to do: 1. Lie the ice-lolly stick across the pencil at right-angles. 2. Put a piece of cereal on the end of the stick touching the table (you just know what's going to happen next, don't you?!) 3. Flip the cereal by hitting the stick end that is in the air. 4. Mark where the pencil (or your "fulcrum") is. 5. Record the distance that the cereal travelled. 6. Now place a small cup at this distance. 7. Fire again and see if your cereal lands in the cup. |
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| 03. ACTIVITY OF THE WEEK 2 - WATER GREAT TRICK! Just time for a quick extra-activity that will either impress your friends, or really annoy them ... The aim of the game is to take advantage of Newton's First Law of Motion; the one that states that if you have the correct props and have practised sufficiently, you can wow your way into the group memory of both friends and strangers, at very low cost indeed. You will need: * A paper napkin * A plastic cup, filled with water * A table - preferably outside * Time to practise, practise, practise in private - DEFINITELY outside! What to do: 1. Drape the napkin over the edge of the table. 2. Place the cup on one corner of the napkin, only a few cms from the edge. 3. Now, focus your mind, calm your nerves, and pull the napkin quickly away from under the cup. What should happen The cup remains where it is and still full of water, due to inertia. The napkin meanwhile is liberated, and can now be flourished in front of the audience. What may happen Water goes everywhere - this is why you need to practise alone. The trick is to pull the napking AS FAST AS YOU POSSIBLY CAN! What also may happen Your one works, but all your little cousins decide to have a try too with less successful results. This is why outdoors is best! |
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| 04. NOW GET OUT OF THAT! OK THEN, I WILL... And from one tricky trick to another... Harry Houdini continuing to defy the confines of even death, as he's back in the news this week. It's a case of Magicians v Museums, and right now the Museums appear to be 1-0 up. The Museum in question is the Outagamie Museum in Appleton, Wisconsin, which has just opened its doors to an exhibit dedicated to the life and work of Houdini, who spent some of his childhood in the town. However, the curators have gone a little bit further than many people were expecting, by revealing exactly how Houdini executed the famous trick in which he used to escape from being handcuffed and tied up in a sack inside a trunk. "Those who do not want to know how Houdini performed his magic should avoid this area," the signs at the exhibition proclaim helpfully - but this public warning has gone no way at all towards calming the ire of hoards of professional magicians who believe the museum has Gone Too Far. Apparently, the Museum claims, the secret was not anything ethereal or mysterious, but instead something to do with a hidden trapdoor ... However, that doesn't explain how Houdini could escape in just 3 seconds, so our calculations here at Planet Science indicate that, overall, even with a trapdoor involved, the illusion must have been at least 30-40% magic. Read the full story of the conjuring kerfuffle (and some more about how he dunnit) on CNN at http://www.cnn.com/2004/TRAVEL/06/02/houdini.secrets.ap/ And if you'd like to know more about Houdini himself, and his amazing feats, here's a couple of really good sites: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/zone/houdini.shtml http://www.foxvalleyhistory.org/houdini/facts.html |
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| 05. MOUSES AT THE READY: BUBBLES AND BANGS IN CARDIFF This week, we have five family passes to give away for the famous Techniquest science centre in Cardiff... As you'll know if you've been there before, Techniquest is packed with interactive demonstrations and explorable displays for all ages, but during the coming month, there's an added attraction, in the form of the ever-popular 'Bubbles and Bangs' show. This is a live event which is held at weekends in the Science Theatre within the centre, and it aims to explain both some chemistry and some physics... though kids won't realise that! What they'll notice are the bubbles of all sizes (up to person-sized) and shapes (including square), and some fantastic explosions and "bubbles of fire"... Fancy a ticket? Then send an email straightaway to planet-science.news@nesta.org.uk entitled I'M BUBBLING OVER! with a note of your name and full address. The draw will take place next Thursday at 5pm. Want more information about Techniquest? Then visit their website at http:// www.techniquest.org |
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| 06. RECOMMENDED WEBSITES OF THE WEEK What's the world's greatest ever invention? It's got to be PAPER, because with paper you can make anything you like... Or at least that's the overwhelming impression you get from a quick peruse of the PAPERCRAFT site at: http://bj.canon.co.jp/english/3D-papercraft/nature/index.html This is a site that's been created by Canon, presumably to help boost sales of its own printers - but you can take full advantage of what's on offer no matter which printer you've got, and it's great fun. Even if it's a bit fiddly at times. What the site offers is a wide selection of beautifully designed print-offs which can be cut, folded and pasted into 3D shapes of all sorts. To call them "shapes" though is to do them a massive injustice, these are paper engineering wonder-works! In the 'Science' category, the activities include a 'World Time Zone' calculator, a stegosaurus, a cross-sectional volcano, a rotating star chart, and a model into which you insert your own torch to show 'How Eclipses Work'. Meanwhile, over in the 'Animals' section, there's a design for a cheetah, a giant panda, and a chihuahua (with, slightly scarily, two special outfits: a red and white Santa jacket, and a Hawaiian shirt). There are also buildings, including L'Arc de Triomphe, the Taj Mahal and Abu Simbel... If by any chance you should get bored of all that, you can even make yourself a Jenga set to play with (though they call it a 'Balance Game'!) * * * * * Secondly this week, a quick mention for DOCTOR OVER TIME. This is an interactive site which is pretty basic, but allows you to explore a bit about the state of medicine in 1900, 1950, and in 1998. The idea is that you adopt the role of a patient, with one of three conditions. You then go and consult the doctor in each of the three years. He (or she) will make a prognosis and let you know what will happen during your treatment and what the likely outcome will be. It's hardly an 'all singing, all dancing' site, but it's a good starting point for anyone with an interest in the history of medicine - or a belief that things were better back in the "good old days"! Here's the link: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/tryit/doctor/ |
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| 07. AWKWARD QUESTION OF THE WEEK Have you scratched a furrow through your hairline trying to figure out the answer to last week's teaser? Or were you forced, yet again, to reach for the Times Super-advanced Crossword Book in search of a "real" challenge? Either way, and for all newcomers, here's the question again: Why would you have got less done in a day during the time of the dinosaurs? (Assume you still have all modern conveniences and supermarkets could still deliver your groceries). And here's the answer: You'd have got less done in a day then because there was less time in which to do it... As we all know, a day is the time it takes the Earth to rotate once on its axis. However, the Earth spun at a faster rate back then, a hangover from its birth as a molten spinning blob. So in dino times, each day was over in less than the 24 hours we get to work, rest and play in now. Why is Earth's rotation slowing? Anything that's slowing down is getting slowed by the force of friction. In the case of our spinning planet, friction is supplied by the tides. All that water sloshing around acts as a brake, slowing us down by between 1.5 and 2 milliseconds a century. This may not seem like a massive amount of time at first sight, but let this work over millions of years and the effects add up to something much more impressive. Do the maths and you find that in the time of the dinosaurs a day only lasted between 16 and 18 hours. Fair play then to those dinosaurs who claimed they simply never had time to do the washing up or put up that shelving in the garage... * * * * * * Ready for another brainteaser? OK here it comes: Think about throwing and jumping events in athletics. What's best, to aim to jump or throw HIGH, so you're (or your shotput, javelin etc is) in the air for a long time, or to aim to jump/throw LONG to cover a lot of distance, but maybe not be airborne for as long as if you went mostly for height? Answer next week! |
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| 08. WINNERS WINNERS WINNERS... Last week we had four family passes to the Magna Centre to give away, and the lucky draw has now taken place. The winners are: Kathleen Longstaff from South Shields in Tyne and Wear, David Williams from Atherstone in Warwickshire, Meena Barham from Walthamstow in London and Nicola Blackburn from Immingham in Lincolnshire. Congratulations - have a great day out. Your tickets will be with you shortly. |
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09. JOKES OF THE WEEK |
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