SCIENCE YEAR NEWSLETTER - ISSUE 28 Week ending Friday, 3rd August 2001 This week's hot news from the Science Museum Hope you've had a good week since the last Newsletter hit your inbox. Here's an update on how the Science Year preparations have been progressing, and some news and website-recommendations from other vid Letter-readers! The Science Year Launch and the Giant Jump Monday 6th August is a red-letter day for the Science Year launch preparations, because that's the day the first batch of publicity information about the Giant Jump goes out to the press... Our PR wonder-woman Siobhan Doherty has been burning the midnight oil, typing her fingers to a pulp and inflicting friction burns on her phone keypad as she's pulled together this first phase of our media -campaign. Look out for the results in your local papers very soon .. and please let us know about any particularly good/bad/daft coverage you come across. Initial reaction to the Giant Jump has been extremely positive - the magnitude (and madness!) of the plan seems to grab those journalists' imaginations quite effectively - so fingers crossed for national Giant Jump fever taking hold soon... If you don't know what the Giant Jump is ... check out Giant Jump Adults and Fancy Dress You'll notice a few new developments in the Giant Jump pre-publicity over the next few weeks. 1. The Giant Jump is of course an educational event (as well as being fun, we hope) and the main focus of attention will be on the school-aged young people taking part. However, we want all jumpers to feel that they can invite their favourite adults to jump along with them on the day. 2. Its for everyone - not just able-bodied people. There are all sorts of ways to take part and pound-the-ground in the Giant Jump. We've compiled a list of ideas and suggestions for ways in which everybody can make an earth-shaking impact, and these will be up on the website any day now ... 3. Party spirit - who says Giant Jump participants have to do the Jump dressed in normal clothes? If you / your pupils / your parents want to dress up as a giant chicken ... fine by us! You'll add an extra splash of colour and madness to the event - and you can always take your head off if you get too hot! To encourage the dressing up spirit, we'll be launching some photographic competitions... watch this space...... Making The Earth Shake, Elephant-Style The scientific aim behind the Giant Jump is to see whether a huge number of people jumping simulaneously will be able to make the UK shake beneath our very feet … With this in mind you may be interested in a feature that caught our eye in this week’s New Scientist magazine. In ‘Rumble in the Jungle’, Joanna Marchant investigates evidence that suggests that elephants may communicate over long distances through vibrations in the ground. If true, this would help to explain some of the long-puzzled mysteries about elephant communities. How, for example, an elephant cull in a particular area seems to have a psychological effect on elephants 50km away, or a thunderstorm in one area appears to prompt elephants vast distances away to head there in search of water. It seems the elephants’ feet and in particular their trunks may have evolved to be supersensitive to ground vibrations… To read more, head to your local newsagent for this week’s edition of New Scientist. Robots On The Warpath Calling all fans of Sergeant Bash, Sir Killalot and the other aggro-addicted metal-munchers of Robot Wars! Science Year is the official sponsor of the Robot Wars touring roadshow, and we continue to have a limited number of complimentary tickets available for each show. The tour is now approaching London, so if you’d like to apply for a pair of tickets for the London Arena or Wembley Arena during the coming week, visit our Robot Wars page (on or after Monday 6th August) for information on how to apply for the freebies ... Debatable Issues On a completely different note, thank you very much to everyone who wrote in during the past week expressing interest in writing for the 'Teachers' magazine head-to-head debates. Kate McCulloch from the magazine will be in touch with you soon if she hasn't already. The issue of how to teach contentious science is clearly a hot topic, which takes us neatly to... The Pantaneto Forum If you're interested or concerned by the way that scientists communicate together or outside the science community, please have a look at the Pantaneto Forum. The Forum is an online journal, which focuses on issues such as: how can scientists explain their work and ideas effectively to non-scientists (or even other scientists)? Is there a role for 'media training', or courses in critical thinking? And is it possible there could be a common language of science, which would be accurate AND understandable to the layman? For more info, visit: www.pantaneto.co.uk Recommended Site of the Week And while we're on the subject of websites, thank you to everyone who sent in suggestions for good science and technology weblinks since the last newsletter. The Science Year library of 'best of the web' cybersites will soon be revamped and will clearly have to be expanded-by-miles to include all the good sites you've suggested. So please - keep them coming! (You'll find the email address at the bottom of this letter) As for our new Recommended Website of the Week feature... This week the site we're suggesting you check out is Australia's Scientriffic site, www.csiro.au/scientriffic The site is aimed at kids aged 7 and upwards, and of course their teachers and parents (or anyone else who thinks they'd enjoy making slime and footprint plaster casts etc!) We thought this site would be particularly good news for anyone currently scrabbling around for activities to keep bored summer-holiday offspring occupied ... And we'd like to thank Ailie Miller from Melbourne who suggested this website to us. And Finally .... Something for the Weekend Jokes R Us again this week......And we've moved on (temporarily?) from lightbulb two-liners - to an 'engineer' joke sent in by Richard Ellam. Stand well back, here we go ... A mathematician, a physicist and an engineer are asked to evaluate ‘one plus two’ The mathematician says " three " The physicist says "somewhere between 2.5 and 3.5, most probably about three". The engineer says " one plus two - that's about four isn't it - but let's call it ten to be on the safe side" (Cue showbiz music and applause ) All engineers with good jokes against mathematicians or physicists are invited to respond! Any other business! As ever, we welcome any comments or thoughts you have about the newsletter, and any information you want to send us about about forthcoming events, good websites - or even good jokes. Please drop a line to: anne.mcnaught@scienceyear.com Have a good week, enjoy Robot Wars if you go - and many thanks for reading down this far! Return to archive