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01. ALOHA TO OUR NEW QUIZ
Millions of years ago, the Hawaiian islands were formed when a series of underwater volcanoes emerged from what's now the Pacific Ocean. Marine and airborne wildlife arrived. Then human settlers, Hollywood and hoards of holidaymakers and honeymooners ... The islands are full of stunning contrasts and a rich scientific heritage, which is why this month's Planet Science online challenge is the HAWAIIAN HULA QUIZ. It's a 10-question multiple-choice brainteaser, and if you think you know your volcanic activity from your visual vantagepoints for astronomers, then get clicking because it's superbly easy to enter. The prizes on offer are three state-of-the-art skateboards, which will make you look typically tropical wherever you skate - or if you're not so keen yourself, you can always give it to a funky friend... (or have a punt on Ebay!) Click here for the quiz. Good luck.  |
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| 02. MOUSES AT THE READY: FOR 'OUR DYNAMIC EARTH' IN EDINBURGH Speaking of geological wonders extruded from the Earth... Q. What is pre-historic, volcanic, tropic, antarctic, dynamic, fantastic - and nestled at the foot of Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh? A. One of the UK's top science centres, Our Dynamic Earth. Our Dynamic Earth explores the extremes of our planet, taking visitors on a journey of discovery from the very beginning of time, through the Earth's history, to the present day and the question of what will become of our Third Rock from the Sun in the distant future... It's not every day you get the chance to travel back in time to witness the Big Bang, stand on the edge of an erupting volcano, fly over glaciers and get caught in a tropical rainstorm, but that's what's on offer at Our Dynamic Earth. (And you can revive yourself with a cup of tea in the café afterwards too.) If this sounds like your kind of day out, and you're in the Edinburgh area over the next few months, then get yourself into this week's draw for a free family pass. We have three passes give away, and all you have to do is send an email entitled I'M FEELING DYNAMIC! to: planet-science.news@nesta.org.uk. Make sure you include a note of your name and address so we can send the tickets to you if you win. The draw will take place next Thursday at 5pm. As an extra attraction, from 9th August, Our Dynamic Earth will be joining in Edinburgh's Festival fun with 'The Science of the Circus Street Show', featuring juggling, fire performance, baloonology, levitation and other circus activities. Discover the science in each one, as the Dynamic staff explore the laws of physics, thermodynamics, air pressure, and physiological verses psychological barriers. Audience participation will of course play it's part, so stand at the back if you're shy and retiring! |
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| 03. ACTIVITY OF THE WEEK: BOUNCY CUSTARD BALLS Just when you thought it was safe to go into the kitchen. Cue Dambusters theme tune... Here they come - watch out! You will need: * Custard powder * PVA glue * Borax (available from chemists *) * Food colouring (optional) * A plastic teaspoon * A tablespoon * 2 plastic cups * NB: People with sensitive skin should wear rubber gloves as the borax can be a mild irritant. What to do: 1. In one plastic cup make up a borax solution by adding a half a teaspoon of borax to two tablespoons of water and stir until dissolved. 2. Pour one tablespoon of PVA glue into the plastic cup. If you want yellow custard balls continue to step 3. Otherwise at this point you could add a few drops of food colouring and stir to mix. Remember that the food colouring will change colour when mixed with the yellow custard powder. So red food colouring will produce a wonderful orange ball, blue will make a green ball etc. 3. Add 1 teaspoon of borax solution to the cup with the PVA glue. 4. Add 2 teaspoons of custard powder. Stir everything together. Add more custard power until the mixture is not too sticky. Knead the solution until it becomes elastic. This can be a bit messy but keep going - try rubbing the mixture between the hands. It should soon start sticking together and become drier and more pliable. 5. Roll the mixture into a ball and bounce it! 6. Catch it if you can! When you're ready for a rest, put the ball in a sealed plastic bag or it will develop a crust and go mouldy (yuk). What if it's Too brittle? means too much borax. Too soft and does not stretch? has not got enough borax. Too dry? add more water. Too wet? add more custard powder. Variations on a theme · You can use cornflour instead of custard powder and add a drop of colouring to the borax solution and make different coloured balls. - Try a bouncing competition or a stretching competition. What's going on? The glue is a polymer (long chain molecule) called polyvinyl acetate (PVA), and the custard powder contains cornflour which is a starch. Starch is also a polymer, this time made up from smaller glucose molecules. The borax acts as a crosslinking agent and binds the two polymer chains together. Too much borax gives too many cross-links and hence a brittle substance. Too little borax means not enough cross-links giving a weak substance that's easily pulled apart. * Can't find borax anywhere? We checked with Boots and over 500 of their branches around the country do sell it, or it's available to buy elsewhere online. |
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| 04. NATURAL WONDERS OF THE WORLD: #1 Ayers Rock / Uluru This week we're beginning a 7-part voyage around the world's 'offical' natural wonders. How many can you name? Answers include Mount Everest and the Great Barrier Reef, but this week we're beginning with Uluru, or 'Ayers Rock' as it's otherwise known. Our in-house Natural Wonder, Ian Francis, has been investigating... A lump of rock doesn't sound very promising as a Natural Wonder of the World, but this is one giant lump of rock. Found in the Northern Territory of Australia, it's 3.6 km long, just under 350m in height, and measures about 8 kilometres round its base. That's just what you can see above ground though - like an iceberg, most of it is hidden below the surface of the surrounding land, an estimated two-thirds at least. The rock is between 400 and 600 million years old, and as Bill Bryson notes in his book 'Down Under', even the dirt soil surrounding it is technically a fossil. In geological terms, it's an 'inselberg' or 'bornhardt', that is, an erosion-resistant lump left protruding when all the surrounding rock has been worn away. Other well-known inselbergs are the lesser known Olgas or 'Kata Tjuta' near Ayers Rock, and the Sugar Loaf in Rio de Janeiro. It's made of tilted layers of conglomerate rock and coarse red arkose sandstone that appear to glow numerous shades of red at sunset and sunrise, making such times very popular for tourists. The red colour is basically rust - the iron minerals in the rock oxidising on exposure to the air. It has had a very long time, after all, in which to rust. Because the layers of sedimentary rock would originally have been flat, we can get some appreciation of the massive forces exerted by the Earth that essentially turned a mountain on its side. It also means that the layers at one end are younger, geologically speaking, than those at the other end. The monolith was named by explorer William Gosse after Henry Ayers, the then premier of South Australia, but is known more often nowadays by the aboriginal name of Uluru ('great pebble'). Uluru is under the traditional ownership of the local Anangu people and jointly managed by them with the Australian government. For the aborigines it is a sacred place and they discourage, but do not forbid, climbing to the summit. Numerous people have died making the steep climb, usually from heart attacks, but some by unintentionally taking the shortest route down. Not surprisingly, Uluru is much photographed and pictures are easy to find on the web. For starters, try: http://www.ga.gov.au/education/facts/landforms/uluru.htm Or, if you fancy a different viewpoint, here's a satellite image: http://www.gesource.ac.uk/worldguide/satellite_landmarks.html |
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| 05. RECOMMENDED WEBSITE OF THE WEEK: A TRUSTWORTHY SITE If you've been inspired by the summer weather, the school holidays and 'Restoration' on tv - here's a site that may come in handy. The National Trust have created a webpage called GREAT PLACES TO SEE SCIENCE WORKING, in which they've listed a huge range of properties around the UK of interest to science and technology historians - or anyone in search of an interesting day out.* See wheat being ground at Houghton Mill in East Anglia, visit South Foreland Lighthouse, where Marconi carried out his experiments into radio transmissions, and try panning for gold in the Dolaucothi Gold Mines in Wales, there are lots of ideas. Sadly not all the links to specific websites are working... but that's not important right now, because very much activated is their online challenge PEST DETECTIVES. This is a learning activity, heavily disguised as a game in which your aim is to move around an old house, conducting insect analyses and demonstrating your own brainpower as a Pest Detective. It's beautifully designed, and if you need help at any point, there's an 'insectopaedia' at hand... Check out both at: http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/learninganddiscovery/ PS there aren't any Scottish sites recommended on the National Trust list, so here's just one idea for a techology-related day out you'll really enjoy if you're in the Central Belt area. It's NEW LANARK at http://www.newlanark.org/ Now a World Heritage site, the New Lanark cotton mill and village has been beautifully restored, and the story of how visionary mill owner Robert Owen transformed life and working practices in the area is fascinating. Apparently the Visitor Centre has won awards too. |
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| 06. AWKWARD QUESTION - and answer Last week's Awkward Question was of a gardening nature, but would be equally at home on a building site. How did you get on? Here it is again: Q. Is it easier to push, or pull, a wheelbarrow? Can you do an Einstein style thought-experiment to devine the answer? Or do you need to see it written down in black and white? OK, here it comes... Pulling is easier. When you push a wheelbarrow, a little of the forward force you exert pushes the wheel into the ground. This adds to the friction you need to overcome, so you have to push that little bit harder. When you pull, you're not adding to friction in this way. So why is pushing a barrow more popular than pulling one? We reckon it's for practical reasons, you can see where everything is going - and you don't get that horrible nipping thing happening where the barrow catches the back of your heels. And so to this week's AQ, a version of which is sometimes demonstrated in school science lessons: Imagine a zookeeper aiming a rifle loaded with a tranquilliser dart at a monkey who needs to be checked by the zoo vet. The monkey spots the zookeeper take aim with the rifle. The monkey is dangling from a branch level with the zookeeper. Now this monkey is older and wiser than the average monkey and doesn't fancy being tranquillised and then fiddled about with by the vet. So, at the instant the monkey sees the flash of the gun going off, he lets go of the branch and falls to the ground. Will the dart zip past harmlessly over his head mid-fall or is he doomed to wake up in a cage in the vet's surgery? Answer next week! Meanwhile: |
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| 07. AWKWARD QUESTION: LAST WEEK'S ANSWER A couple of eagle-eyed newsletter readers have emailed us about possible mistakes in the explanation of last week's awkward question. The question concerns unrealistic movie sound FX added by Hollywood technicians to scenes in which someone falls off the edge of a cliff... The complaints were forwarded to our Awkward Question Uber-Meister who assures us that all privileges have been withdrawn from the Awkward Question (AQ) apprentice elves until such a time as they get their facts right. What's got the AQ elves in so much trouble? One dodgy sentence slipped through quality control. It concerns the apparent change in pitch of a vehicle (eg. an ambulance or police car) as it drives up to you and then past you. Last week we said this about such vehicles: 'The pitch increases as they approach, and then decreases as they recede'. What we should have said is that the pitch of the vehicle (as heard by the listener) is higher than the true pitch as the vehicle approaches, and that the pitch of the vehicle (as heard by the listener) is lower than the true pitch as the vehicle recedes. It's a subtle difference, and we apologise for incorrectly suggesting that the apparent pitch changes continuously on approach and on recession. The apparent pitch won't change unless the vehicle is speeding up or slowing down, in which case the true pitch of engine noise could be changing anyway, confusing the elves further, but getting them off on a technicality. Don't feel too bad for the AQ apprentice elves though. The other complaint received was not upheld by the court. This was a comment that the apparent pitch of the scream from a falling person wouldn't continue to get lower and lower because the faller wouldn't continue to accelerate all the time they're falling. They'd get to a certain speed (terminal velocity) and then travel no faster. At this point the apparent pitch of their scream would stay the same. This reader is correct, but we're letting the AQ elves off as they quite rightly point out that it takes from 8 to 10 seconds to reach terminal velocity. This would need a cliff with a height of up to 1/2 a kilometre. (For comparison, the Big One rollercoaster in Blackpool is just a little short of 75 metres in height). So unless the moviemakers have got an unfeasibly high cliff to go with their unfeasible sound effect, the terminal velocity thing won't happen. Thanks to everyone who took time to comment on the AQ explanation. Feel free to email Planet Science if you believe any future AQ answers are anything less than 100% legal, decent, honest and truthful. We retain the right to preface all responses with "Ok, ok, just testing whether you were awake..." |
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| 08. WINNERS WINNERS WINNERS The draw has now taken place for last week's competition to win a family pass for the SoundSpace gallery at Eureka! The Museum for Children in Halifax, and the winners were: Lesley Newton from Leicester Emma Blood from Derby Kathleen Longstaff from South Shields Lisa Mathias from Baildon, West Yorkshire Congratulations to all of you, may the groove be with you! Your tickets will be in the post asap... |
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09. JOKE OF THE WEEK |
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