1. Wassup Planet Science? – what’s new on the Planet Science website.
    Fancy doing something different? SciCast or Making a Mint – you choose! Read more...
  2. Sooo Random – Science news straight to your Inbox...
    Are you a lazybones or a giraffe? Plus the Wii Fit oversteps the mark. Read more...
  3. Over 2U! – Science experiments for you to try at home...
    Building structures from cheese and sticks. Read more...
  4. Gear Giveaway –You’ve got to be in it to win it...
    Who’s left a tap dripping? Read more...
  5. Winners – Has your name been picked out of the bag?
    The winners of five Flipside mags. Read more...

1. Wassup Planet Science?

Considering entering this year’s SciCast Awards? The first thing you need to do is send off for a FREE Scicast pack that will tell you all you need to know.

Now read up more about the nominations and the lucky winners of last year’s awards on the Scicast blog.

Convinced? Take a look at this report from Coseley School in Birmingham and if that isn’t enough then flick through the photo gallery and get a feel for the occasion. So now you know – checkout the Scicast site to find out what you need to do. Basically – think up a good idea, grab some mates and a camera and film your masterpiece in two and a half mins or less. Your teachers might even be up for you filling in that end-of-summer-term-time with such a project. Simple eh? Well OK it’s not quite that simple but one look at the SciCast Awards should convince you that the effort is well worthwhile.

Do you consider yourself more of an entrepreneur (think Dragon’s Den)? Then what about entering the Making a Mint challenge? This is a mintastic opportunity for 7 – 14 year olds to win £1000 for the school or clubhouse in either Amazon or Garden Vouchers. So what are you waiting for? Go completely menthol! If you reckon you've run out of time to grow the mint from scratch then beg, borrow or buy some (but if you do buy it, make sure you add it to your balance sheet as an expense!). Sign up to receive a free pack immediately!

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2. Sooo Random

Are you fed up being hassled about sleeping too late at the weekends? Saturdays don’t start till lunchtime anyway do they? Well now you’ve got the perfect comeback to any ‘sloth-like’ references. Sloths were always thought of as the laziest creatures in the animal kingdom, but not any more! Now scientists have proved they're not as sleepy as they first thought. In fact although captive sloths sleep for more than 16 hours a day, those in the wild sleep less than 10 hours. So how do they know this? They caught sloths in the rainforest in Central America and fitted them with sleep monitoring devices. We don’t suppose they had much trouble catching them, more a case of sneaking up on them when they were snoozing. Anyway the data collected may help scientists working with people who have trouble sleeping. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Incidentally different animals have different sleep needs. Pythons sleep for 18 hours a day, while giraffes survive on just two hours. So there you go – are you a python or a giraffe? Or are you not ssssssssss-ure?

The Wii Fit game hit the news this week after it told a girl she's fat. Charming!

The game works out players' BMI (body mass index), which shows if you're the right weight for your height. However it is widely known that this calculation is based on adults and not children so the results won’t be accurate for youngsters. Also the BMI index can’t tell the difference between muscle and fat. Therefore some really muscly like footballers and rugby players could be classed as obese using this method because muscle weighs more than fat. Er… do you want to tell them or should we?

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3. Over 2U!

Towering Success

You will need:

  • A box of cocktail sticks
  • Cheese cubes or marshmallows or jelly sweets – or a combination - get lots - it's wierd, but they keep disappearingas you go along.

What to do:

The idea is to build a stable structure – but which shapes are best? Here’s a quick rundown on the basics:

Squares and Cubes

  1. Start with 4 cocktail sticks and 4 sweets. Poke the cocktail sticks into the sweets to make a square with a sweet at each corner.
  2. Poke another cocktail stick into the top of each sweet. Put a sweet on the top of each cocktail stick. Connect the sweets with cocktail sticks to make a cube. (A cube has a square on each side. It takes 8 sweets and 12 cocktail sticks.)

Triangles and Pyramids

  1. Start with 3 sweets and 3 cocktail sticks. Poke the cocktail sticks into the sweets to make a triangle with a sweet at each point.
  2. Poke another cocktail stick into the top of each sweet. Bend those 3 cocktail sticks in toward the centre. Poke all 3 cocktail sticks into one sweet to make a 3-sided pyramid. (A 3-sided pyramid has a triangle on each side. It takes 4 sweets and 6 cocktail sticks.)
  3. For a 4-sided pyramid, you need a square on the bottom and triangles on all 4 sides. Build a square, and then poke a cocktail stick into the top of each corner. Bend all 4 cocktail sticks into the centre and connect them with one sweet, to make a 4-sided pyramid.

    When you make a structure that uses both triangles and squares, you can make big structures that are less wiggly.

    OK, so now you’ve got the idea, it’s time to set the rules and get creative.
  4. Set the rules: limit the number of sweets and cocktail sticks available per person and decide on the criteria for winning. It could be a) the tallest structure or b) the structure that can bear the most weight or even c) the one that most resembles a famous building. You can set a time limit if you want to be particularly strict.

What's happening?

The inside story:

Even though the sweet structures are standing absolutely still, their parts are always pulling and pushing on each other. Structures remain standing because some parts are being pulled or stretched and other parts are being pushed or squashed. The parts that are being pulled are in tension. The parts that are being squashed are in compression.

Some materials, like bricks, don’t squash easily; they are strong in compression. Others, like steel cables or rubber bands, don't break when you stretch them; they are strong under tension. Still others like steel bars or wooden cocktail sticks are strong under both compression and tension.

What's the big deal about triangles? Well, squares collapse easily under compression. Four cocktail sticks joined in a square tend to collapse by giving way at their joints, their weakest points. A square can fold into a diamond – but it’s different for triangles. The only way to change the angles of the triangle is by shortening one of the sides. So to make the triangle collapse you would have to push hard enough to break one of the cocktail sticks.

More Ideas

Display a number of pictures of structures such as bridges illustrating the use of triangles in the structure.

Interactive exercise on the effects of loads on different shapes

Skyscrapers

Bridges

How Stuff Works: Bridges

Special safety advice

Cocktail sticks are sharp! Take care when handling.

Planet Scicast films

Structural Engineering in Action

Why did the Millennium Bridge Wobble?

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4. Gear Giveaway –You’ve got to be in it to win it...

irate woman

Imagine how irritating it would be to hear a tap dripping in the dark and then as soon as you turn the lights on - it stops. Yep. Pretty annoying we’d say. So that’s why we’re offering you THREE ‘Annoying Sound’ boxes. Simply switch them on, hide them in someone’s bedroom or tent and as soon as it gets dark the noise will start. When they switch the light on to search for it, the noise will stop. Tee hee!

If you’d like to win one then email us with your name and postal address to randomised.news@nesta.org.uk with ‘ANNOYING NOISE’ in the subject line. The winner will be picked at random at 5pm on Wednesday 4th June 2008.

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5. Winners – Has your name been picked out of the bag?

Last time we were offering five copies of Flipside magazine. The winners are Tom Parry of London, Bernard Forrester of Clacton-on-Sea, William Joyce of Preston, Carry McOmish of Glasgow and Andrew Wall of Aberdeenshire. Happy reading everyone!

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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!