SCIENCE YEAR NEWSLETTER - ISSUE 31 Week ending Friday, 24th August 2001 Hello and welcome to another round-up of the week’s events. Lots has been happening this week … and like a crop circle being created overnight, the shape and structure of Science Year is beginning to reveal itself to be magnitudinous and strangely beautiful! Thank you to everyone who’s helped us to get where we are so far – the array of exciting projects and activities on the agenda is quite amazing. We’ve received contributions and ideas from people from all walks of science, technology, engineering and teaching as to how you’d like to get involved and how we can help you. Please keep those emails and phonecalls coming, we really welcome them. (And any delay in replying to you lately has been caused by email difficulties not indifference!) THE GIANT JUMP The Giant Jump, our world-record attempting simultaneous minute of jumping, continues to gather momentum. At the time of writing, we have 3,166 schools registered to do some leaping about in the name of science on the 7th September … but the Giant Jump registration form remains on the website for any school or other organisation who’s not registered yet. Which IS a hint! All groups who have registered and given us their postal addresses will be sent a letter next week, containing all the information and teaching notes available on the Jump. Most of it is already on the website, but "there’ll be a few extra bits and pieces in there too", says Jump co-ordinator Bobby Cerini. (Mysterious woman! ) Please note: If you have registered, but we don’t have your postal address we will contact you by email in the next few days. MEDIA AWARENESS Thanks to all registrants who have emailed to say they’re happy if members of the media contact them. We’ve forwarded the information on to our press officer and it means that when journalists contact us and want to know about Jumping schools in their area we can give them your details straightaway – which will hopefully help to maximise coverage. GIANT JUMP VIDEO NATION The Giant Jump cameras have been out and about during the past two weeks and anyone and everyone who’s been prepared to jump up and down for us has been captured on film. The end result will be a pop video style one-and-a-half minutes of shiny happy people having fun – including a few famous faces (and feet) such as Craig Charles and the Robo-babes, Bubble from Big Brother, and popstrels Little Trees and Masai. Two things have become clear: people LOVE jumping once you get them started … but it can take quite a lot of persuasion to get members of the general public to jump on camera! (Not a problem for a rather energetic Beefeater who was ‘encountered’ at Tower Bridge and attracted a crowd in record time. But were they just checking out his dodgy moustache and beard combo and wondering whether he was the genuine article or a member of the production team in fancy dress…Hmmmm) DESIGN A JUMPSUIT COMPETITION The competition to design a groovy outfit for jumping in is still open … so if you’ve got some good ideas, or you know someone else who might have, get them to enter! There will be a scientastic prizes for the best designs. The address to send your design to is: Science Year Giant Jump Design Challenge, 11 Tufton Street, London SW1P 3QB. SCI-ART FUNDING AVAILABLE Changing the subject from the Giant Jump for a moment, but staying with science and art … If you have somewhat more elaborate ideas for sci/art projects, check out http://www.sciart.org Like NESTA which manage Science Year, Sciart is a consortium that enables collaborations between scientists and artists, and encourages project outcomes to be shared with diverse audiences. They’re currently inviting applications for partnerships of artists and scientists for up to 10 RESEARCH grants … of up to £10,000 each. And the deadline for applying is 3 December 2001. HOT STUFF Meanwhile, fancy winning a lava lamp or a boiler pen? The SY quizmaster has been back and deposited another devilish competition on the website. All you have to do is successfully complete our new Thermo-Quiz. All the questions concern temperature of one sort of another and the answers are all there to be found on the web. (That’s if you don’t know them off the top of your head, of course!) RECOMMENDED WEBSITE OF THE WEEK Outer space and the ocean may not seem like they’re obvious partners on a website, but they’re BOTH ‘final frontiers’ as far as human exploration are concerned. In fact some say we know more about space than we do about the depths of the Earth’s oceans… www.seasky.org is really easy to find your way around, and packed with interesting information and news. So if you’re interested in knowing more about these most extreme of extreme environments, give it a go! JOKE OF THE WEEK Thanks very much to Dave Hall … for a carnivorous science joke. Q. Why does Moon rock taste better than Earth rock? A. Because it's meteor. (it’s all in the timing!) NB Dave does point out that this is not scientifically correct. Or suitable for vegetarians. But it made a panel of Science Year joke testers laugh all the same. More jokes please please please. (If we don’t receive any more jokes, we’ll have to tell the old ones again, which should serve as a warning!!) ANY OTHER BUSINESS As ever, please contact anne.mcnaught@scienceyear.com with any comments you have about the newsletter or the website or ideas or events you’d like us to mention in the newsletter. Until the next newsletter … have a good week. Return to archive