SCIENCE YEAR NEWSLETTER - ISSUE 25 Week ending Friday, 13th July 2001 The Giant jump If you haven’t heard of the Giant Jump yet, we’re doing something wrong! The Giant Jump is Science Year’s key launch event on the 7th September, and as you’re probably very well aware by now, we’d like as many schools as possible to register and take part … and anyone else who wants to, of course. The registrations have continued to roll in all week, and the present total of schools signed up is 1743. But as we’re going for a world record AND aiming for a ground-quake rockier than an Oasis concert, we clearly need as many feet pounding the ground as possible! So step this way if you’ve not registered yet but you’d like to: Giant Jump For those of you who have ALREADY registered we have more information available for you. Please visit the above address for this information, and even though you have already registered, please fill in our ‘new improved’ registration form which asks for a few more details from you, regarding how many children will be jumping etc. (This is all in aid of making the Giant Jump a stupendous success, so please bear with us!) Early next week we will also be posting up instructions on the website as to how to make your own seismometer. And you can prepare for this exciting event by stocking up on cardboard boxes, string and rice over the weekend ! ASE funding still available - but the clock's ticking! As featured previously in the Newsletter, the Association for Science Education are now accepting bids from schools/colleges for funding to support individual educational projects. Schools can apply for up to £700 through this scheme, so if you think you might be interested, visit their site for more information: http://www.ase.org.uk/scienceyear/syrprojects.html Please note that the closing date for all applications is 31st July 2001 so all thinking caps must be tightly buckled on in the rather near future. Is There Life Out There? And if so, what do they make of the Conservative Party leadership battle? Seriously though … the question of whether life exists anywhere else in the universe is one of the biggest unanswered questions in science. It’s also one of the subjects on which the Association for Science Education are currently preparing extensive teaching resources for Science Year – so watch this space. In the meantime however, PPARC, the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council, have prepared a colourful and information-packed glossy poster on this multi-dimensional topic. They are offering a free, yes FREE! copy to all schools, complete with Teacher’s Notes … and they’re also offering to send a poster to any extra-terrestrially interested ! Science Year newsletter readers who would like one as well. All you need to do is email PPARC on: pr.pus@pparc.ac.uk And of course, keep watching out for any unexplained bright hovering lights over your house .. The Science Year Quiz Yeowch – we thought the quiz was quite challenging and possibly quite difficult … but didn’t realise that out of the hundreds of people who have completed the quiz, we’d only get ONE person successfully completing all 20 questions. That person was Anita Prazmowska of London, so many congratulations to her – we’ll be sending a variety of lovely science prizes to you Anita, so watch your postbox over the coming days. As for everyone else … we still do have 19 packets of space food left over for prizes – so check the site early next week when we’ll have reduced the number of questions to 10 - taking out the ones we consider the MOST perplexing! Renaming the Teacher's Area Only one week left to get your suggestion in for what the Teacher’s Area of our site should be called … Hurry hurry! Jokes Well, we’ve been deluged by a trickle of good science jokes coming in during the week. Obviously we’re holding back on the good ones (or is that a cunning double bluff? You decide!) but here are two of the best: Absolute zero rules OK (thank you David Froud!) And surely there’s nothing wrong with raiding the Tommy Cooper joke book if the old ones are indeed the best ones … here goes: "Police arrested two kids yesterday, one was drinking battery acid, the other was eating fireworks ...........They charged one and let the other one off." (Thank you Sarah Griffiths!) Any other business! As ever, please don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any comments or thoughts regarding the newsletter or website for future weeks – or jokes. The address is: anne.mcnaught@scienceyear.com Thank you! Return to archive