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 Boo! Back again - these Fridays seem to come round faster than Jenson Button in a particle accelerator... This week's newsletter travels from the deepest depths of Hull, to the rings of Saturn, calling in at a range of scientific service stations on the way. Here's our route-planner: 01. PRIMARY SCIENCE TEACHING AWARDS 02. Activity of the Week: PINHOLE CAMERA 03. 'MISSION TO SATURN' - free resources 04. MOUSES AT THE READY for The Deep in Hull 05. THIS WEEK IN SCIENCE HISTORY: Rabies vaccine invented 06. RWW: COME TO YOUR SENSES 07. AWKWARD QUESTION - and answer 08. WINNERS OF 'TITANIC' TICKETS 09. HINT HINT HINT - don't say we never help you win... 10. JOKES OF THE WEEK Ready? Hold tight... |
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01. PRIMARY SCIENCE TEACHING AWARDS 2004
Alert, alert! Do you know an excellent teacher of Primary school science? If so, why not do them the honour of nominating them for a Primary Science Teaching Award 2004? The Awards are run by the Association for Science Education (ASE) and what the judges are looking for is a paragon of science-teaching virtue, who not only has loads of imaginative ideas for how to engage pupils in science but also makes a valuable contribution to developing the science teaching in their school as a whole. There are five awards of £750 for the school & £500 for the teacher, plus winners will receive a certificate & complimentary membership of the ASE for a year. There's also a special award for teachers working in challenging circumstances, known as the AstraZeneca Teaching Trust Trustee Award. For an online application and further information, visit the ASE's site at: http://www.ase.org.uk/htm/homepage/notes_news/june_2004/ The closing date is 31st July.  |
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| 02. ACTIVITY OF THE WEEK: PINHOLE CAMERA! You know what they say, make pinhole cameras while the sun shines... This is a classic activity, but even in these high-tech digital times, it always sends shiver of excitement up the spine to see that ghostly, moving image of the world in front of you 'captured' on mere tracing paper. What you'll need: * A small cardboard box, with thin sides (like a box for tea) * A sharp pencil * Tracing paper * Sticky tape * Scissors * Black paint, magnifying glass (both optional) What to do: 1. Assuming your box is not square, select one of the larger sides and draw a frame 2cm in from each side. 2. Cut out the inner rectangle and remove. 3. Paint the inside of the box black and allow to dry. Cut out a piece of tracing paper and stick it across the missing side to form a window. 4. Make a small hole in the side opposite the tracing paper window. 5. Direct the hole towards a brightly lit object and look at the window. You should see an upside-down image in the window. If the image is too dark make the hole larger (1cm across is ideal), however the image will be more blurred. Use the magnifying glass to focus the image. This experiment came from our activity database, The Little Book of Experiments, and you can have a look at its illustration of why the resulting image is upside down, by clicking here. The pinhole camera works like the eye. The pinhole is effectivly the pupil, the tracing paper is the retina, and the magnifying glass is the lens. But in that case, you may be wondering, how come we don't see the world upside down ourselves? The answer is that our brains 'know' to reverse the incoming images, so that up is still up and down is still down. Psychologists have spent many a fun day experimenting with this phenomenon. Experiments have been recorded in which subjects were asked to wear up/down reversing prisms on their eyes to explore whether their brains could cope with a "real" upside down view of the world. And the answer was: after several days of banging into things, yes, the subjects' brains were able to readjust, so that the world looked the right way up again... But things flipped back to normal very quickly after they took the mad-specs back off again. |
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| 03. 'MISSION TO SATURN' - FREE RESOURCE First Mars, then Venus, now Saturn. The eyes of the world are certainly focused heavenwards at the moment. As you may have seen on the news, after a seven year journey through the inky blackness of space, the mission known as 'Cassini-Huygens' finally reached Saturn yesterday. As a "gas giant", there's nowhere to physically land on Saturn, so it's all about the pictures and explorations that can be done en route. In June, the probe passed by Phoebe, Saturn's furthest moon, but yesterday it crossed the 'ring plane'. The resulting pictures are spectacular, and you can have a look and keep up with the latest news, on the official European Space Agency site at http://saturn.esa.int/ If you're a teacher in need of some fantastic materials about the mission, there's more good news. PPARC, the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council, have been in touch to announce that, as they put it, "their Cassini-Huygens schools resource has also reached its destination on the World Wide Web." The site contains images, information and activities based on the mission, which can be used online or downloaded as Word or pdf files. There are sections suitable for respectively 7-11, 11-14, 14-16 and 16+ age groups. The website seems to be in mid-manoeuvre at the moment, but you'll find it on either: http://www.pparc.ac.uk/cassini/ OR alternatively, on http://www.pparc.ac.uk/Ed/ch/Home.htm. The materials will also shortly be available as a free CDRom. If you'd like one, you can order it from pr.pus@pparc.ac.uk. PS, the purveyors of these great materials say they would welcome any feedback on the site; any comments should be sent to the PPARC Schools Officer, Andrew Morrison on morrison@innotts.co.uk |
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| 04. MOUSES AT THE READY FOR 'THE DEEP' IN HULL How do you fancy coming snout to snout with Europe's only pair of 1.5m long green sawfish - the creature described as "half shark, half chainsaw"? This hair-raising scenario might sound like a scene from a particularly grizzly Bond film, but the fact is, it could happen to you. Although, comfortingly, in this case, there's a robust glass wall keeping the humans and the sea-dwellers apart. The two green sawfish are just two of the many, many attractions at 'The Deep', Hull's amazing underwater exploration centre, or "submarium" as they call it. There's a range of aquaria, but the biggest is the 10m deep 'Endless Ocean' feature which houses not just sharks, but stingrays, batfish, seahorses, octopuses (octopi?) and warty hogfish, and you can take a glass lift up through the whole thing... You may not find Nemo, but you'll certainly see a lot of good stuff! We have two four-person family passes to The Deep to give away, and if you would like to get into the draw, all you need to do is send an email entitled FEEDING FRENZY! to planet-science.news@nesta.org.uk with the title and a note of your name and address. The draw will take place on Thursday at 5pm. Meanwhile, back to those sawfish, the reason why The Deep are so proud of their two jagged-nosed charges is because they're an endangered species and special permission has only been granted to The Deep to keep a pair from an allowable catch because the facilities are top-notch, and it's hoped that the sawfish will breed in captivity sometime in the future. (And in case you're wondering, when they're born, young sawfish have a squishy soft saw, so as not to harm their mothers....) |
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| 05. THIS WEEK IN SCIENCE HISTORY: MAD DOGS AND FRENCHMEN... This week sees the anniversary of the first ever successful use of a rabies vaccine on a human being... On 6th July 1885, Louis Pasteur, better known for inventing the Pasteurisation process that bears his name, gave the first of a course of anti-rabies injections to Joseph Meister, a nine-year old boy who had sustained multiple bites when mauled by a rabid dog two days earlier. Rabies is a viral disease, transmitted in the saliva of infected animals, usually through biting. The virus attacks the central nervous system in mammals, causing 'encephalitis' - or brain inflammation. In rodents, the disease tends to produce paralysis; in carnivores, uncontrolled aggression. In fact, both outcomes can be observed in human cases, though we tend to associate rabies with the 'fury-type' symptoms. (In fact, the word "rabies" is the Latin for "rage" or "fury".) Between infection and the appearence of symptoms, rabies has a long incubation period, on average about 30-40 days. Once symptoms appear, however, the disease always proves fatal. Rabies is present in all continents except Antarctica and Australia (and is also absent, of course, from various island land masses including Britain). The principle 'vector'- or transmitting organism - for rabies is the dog; though in Latin America, the disease can often be traced back to the vampire bat. Prior to the rabies treatment, Pasteur and his colleagues had developed animal vaccines for chicken cholera, anthrax, and a pig disease called 'swine erysipelas'. Their common method - and the basis of all vaccination - was the identification and injection of a non-lethal variant of the disease. In the case of rabies, the team used virus from dried gragments of dog spinal cord, which they had sicovered was non-virulent, and had been successfully used to protect experimentally infected dogs. Pasteur's decision to use this treatment on a human boy was taken at high personal risk, since he was not a licensed doctor, and could have faced prosecution. Instead, the result was international acclaim. The first Pasteur Institute was built on the basis of this achievement, and the Pasteur anti-rabies immunization procedure was rapidly adopted throughout the world, beginning the modern era of immunization. Though other, more effective (and expensive) anti-rabies procedures are now available, the basic 'Pasteur Treatment' - a brain tissue vaccine plus formaldehyde cocktail - is still used in many countries of the world where rabies is prevalent. |
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| 06. RECOMMENDED WEBSITE OF THE WEEK Isn't it time for you to COME TO YOUR SENSES? Oh go on! This is a great site, particularly for primary age kids, which explores and explains how each of our five senses work, and plenty of what they call 'Sense-ational' facts'. Like, did you know that... ... fish can taste with their fins? ... the least sensitive part of the human body is the middle of your back? ... or that you can probably distinguish between 4000 and 10,000 different smells? There are instructions for some sense-related activities, and if you want more, they've generously researched a load more links to other sites on the same subject. Here's where you'll find COME TO YOUR SENSES: http://library.thinkquest.org/3750/ |
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| 07. AWKWARD QUESTION OF THE WEEK How did you get on with last week's challenge? Here's the question again: A piece of solid iron in the shape of a doughnut is heated over a fire. As the iron expands, does the hole become larger or smaller or does it remain the same size? Hmmmm? And the answer is: As the doughnut expands, it keeps its same proportions; so the hole also gets bigger. This same principle is at work when an optician removes a lens from a pair of glasses by heating the frame. To understand why the proportions stay the same, you have to consider the individual atoms of iron and how they bond with each other. When a substance is heated, it expands, but it's the average distance between particles that grows, not the particles themselves. In other words, the bonds stretch due to the particles moving slightly greater distances apart. Imagine footballers standing on the edge of the centre circle on a footie pitch. If they take a single step in a random direction, they're slightly more likely to end up outside the centre circle than inside it. Now substitute (no pun intended) an iron atom at the edge of the doughnut hole and the same reasoning suggests the iron atom is more likely to end up backing away from the hole (enlarging it) rather than jumping in (and shrinking it). Of course, comparing footballers with iron atoms can only go so far. Hopefully footballers have a mind of their own, but iron atoms can't act independently because they're still joined together by (slightly stretched) bonds. These bonds mean that the pull of the majority 'trying' to enlarge the hole wins out over the minority 'trying' to shrink it. So, on a more practical note, the next time you can't undo the metal lid on a stubborn jar, heat the lid under hot water. The lid, inner circumference and all, will expand, making it easier to loosen. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> And those Awkward Questions just keep coming. This week's AQ could be said to be particularly relevant during the summer holidays.... Ms Edna Conomy runs a once-impressive seaside hotel a mile away from our old friend Arty Pooper's house. It's hard to turn a profit in the business, so she has developed ingenious ways of keeping costs down. One way is to recycle leftover bars of soap. She picks out any bits of hairs and fluff from the old soaps and puts the remaining slivers into a mould called a 'Soap Sam'. Once Sam has done his work, each 5 bits of leftover soap make one new bar. The hotel has 13 bedrooms. Each bedroom will supply 2 leftover bits of soap. How many complete 'new' bars of soap will Edna be able to make? Answer next week! |
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08. WINNERS OF 'TITANIC' TICKETS |
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| 09. HINT HINT HINT: JULY HOLIDAY SPECIAL QUIZ Pssssst - if you're keen on winning the July Quiz (see last week's newsletter) with its day-sack and map case prize - then listen up! Apparently many people are getting all the answers correct except no 8, but the word from our Quiz Controller is this this: "The clue is in the question." Repeat: The CLUE is in the QUESTION. And in particular, the clue might be in the area of the words 'sun seekers' (making 'fire ants' the wrong answer - see??). But SSSSSHHHH - we've said too much already. Careless talk costs prizes... |
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| 10. JOKE OF THE WEEK Jonathan Forgham has been in touch this week with two jokes deriving from a trip with his Year 4 pupils to the Rye Meads RSPB nature reserve in Hertfordshire. (Which incidentally, he says is "superb for habitats, pond dipping and birding. Very highly recommended for years 1 to 9 certainly." The website if you'd like a look is: http://www.rspb.org.uk/reserves/guide/r/ryemeads/index.asp Anyway! While on the trip, they saw a herd of water buffalo, which brought to Jonathan's mind the following: Q. What's the difference between a buffalo and a bison? A. You can't wash your hands in a buffalo! To which his class groaned and retorted with: Q. What's the difference between a soldier and a fireman? A. You can't dip a fireman in your egg! Credit due to Jessica Hayes of Summercroft JM School Bishop's Stortford for the latter. If you need MORE jokes in your life, remember that there's a groovily-illustrated online compilation of the best (and, ok, most of the rest too) of the jokes previously featured in the newsletter, here. Enjoy! * * * * * * More, more, more jokes are needed for future newsletters, so PLEASE feel free to send in any that come your way. We are also always looking for news items and website recommendations that might inform, education or entertain other readers, so if you've got anything suitable up your sleeve, please send it to Anne McNaught on planet-science.news@nesta.org.uk. Have a great week! |
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