Randomised Friday 13th February 2009 Issue 24 Welcome to another Randomised! Friday the 13th.... feeling superstitious? The anxiety of thinking something will go wrong can actually lead to something going wrong. So if you aren't feeling lucky it might be better to stay in bed... Planet Picks - New Quiz Planet Super Powers Gear Giveaway - Two-packs of Flipsides Over2U! - Pulp Friction Winners - Feeling Lucky?

1. Planet Picks - Come and visit us!

March may be the start of spring but we're still faced with icy weather and struggling to get out of bed an hour earlier when the clocks go forward.

If you can muddle through all this and still have enough brain power left to answer the cunning March Mash quiz questions correctly, then you will deserve to win a fantastic foolproof egg timer. Ten are up for grabs. So if the perfect breakfast will get you out of bed in the morning start thinking!

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2.Planet Super Powers

WAHOO!! It's the launch of the picture gallery and a crossword competition. Planet Super Powers! Picture Gallery Now you can see why The Judge's decision was extremely difficult! If your entry is not there please email mizingenuity@f2s.com Planet Super Powers! Crossword Prize Draw Solve the crossword puzzle while you look for clues to the master-villain's identity in the first five episodes of the comic strip. Enter the prize draw to win a Rubik's Cube puzzle by emailing the completed crossword to mizingenuity@f2s.com with your name, age and address before 5pm on Tuesday 24th March Planet Science Name a Star Competition Still time to enter the competition by sending your ideas for the name of the galaxy and/or the superheroes' space station base in an email with your name and age (must be 5-14 years old) to mizingenuity@f2s.com before 5 pm on Monday the 16th of March. Next time on Planet Super Powers! Back to the Battle for Planet Science...

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3. Gear Giveaway - You’ve got to be in it to win it...

We have two copies of William's Words in Science up for grabs this week. This handy book contains just about everything you need to really get to grips with science. It's suitable for anyone 11 and older, whether you are looking up a famous scientist in the biographies section or figuring out where the spleen is in the human body!

If you want to be in with a chance of winning this, send us an email with your name and address and the words 'Bill's Books' in the subject line to randomised.news@nesta.org.uk. The draw will take place at 5pm on Wednesday 25th March.

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4. Over2U! - Pulp Friction

You will need

- Two large, thick, paperback text books - the closer they are in size the better.

- A strong volunteer

What you do

1. Lock the books together. You can do this as if you were riffle-shuffling a pack of cards (but much slower!). Alternatively flick through about 20 pages of one book and flick about 20 pages of the second book on top.

2. The deeper the books are inserted into each other the better the grip.

3. Now ask your strong volunteer to pull in the spine of one of the books while you pull on the spine of the other.

4. To take the books apart, you'll need to give them a shake and ease them apart.

What's going on?

Paper isn't quite as smooth as it seems. We can write on it because there is friction between a pencil and the paper: the friction rubs off some of the pencil's graphite.

If you hold two pieces of paper together with flat palms and try to rub them together you get an idea of the amount of friction between just two pieces of paper. The dips and grooves in the surface of one piece of paper lock into the dips and grooves of the other. Each time a page from one of the books comes into contact with a page from the other book there will be friction when they are pulled in opposite directions. Multiply this friction by the number of pages in contact, and the amount of friction increases enormously. The spine, and the fact that you are squeezing the books to get a good grip, just pushes the dips and grooves in the interleaved pages of the books harder into each other. The result is books that can't be pulled apart.

The only way to release them is the lift the pages apart - and you can do this by giving the books a bit of a shake.

Special Safety advice

Don't pull so hard that either one of you falls back. Also be careful if the books are important: the friction can hold them together very strongly and you could rip the spine off before getting them apart.

This activity was featured in the Best SciCast film 2008. If you want to see the list of nominated films for this year have a look at the Scicast Blog.

You can also view the pulp friction experiment here.

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5. Winners - Feeling Lucky?

The lucky winners who will be receiving copies of the January and February Flipsides are... Patrick Bowen from Telford, Joseph Halse from Louth, Laura Brooks from Devon, Daniel Howard from Liverpool and Amber Lacey from Bristol. Congratulations!

The daft old and young romantics who were pulled out of the hat as Lurve Quiz Winners were Fiona Victory from Ruislip, David Thomson of Aylesbury, Pam Plater of Crediton and Zandy Udueni from London. Well done, and a selection of soppy heart shaped things will be with you soon.

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THAT'S ALL FOR NOW

You've been Randomised!

Send any questions, comments, jokes or experiment ideas to: randomised.news@nesta.org.uk

Bye for now!