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Friday 26th May 2006 Issue: 48

Hoorah! It’s Friday and time for another techtastic Wired Up. Hold on! Who’s that trilling away in the background?

Oh it’s only the Singing Physicist.  More about him later.  Good gracious! What on earth has happened to our flower tubs? That shiny, slimy trail should give us a clue.  The mighty mollusc himself, Sid the Slug leafstripper par excellence, has been at it again.  Did you know that slugs have 27,000 teeth? Wouldn’t like to be behind one at the dentist’s. Want to find out more? Dive in!

  1. Planet Picks – Last chance to enter the Merry Month of May Quiz
  2. Winners – Flipside magazines
  3. You What?  – when is a piranha really a bloater?  Plus slug facts for mollusc fans
  4. The Wire – Harry Potter and the Singing Physicist, is it the new book?
  5. Gear for Grabs – Two family passes for the Centre for Life
1. Planet Picks– News from the world of Planet Science…

Hey! Hold the bus! The May quiz is still available on the Planet site website. Ten questions to get your mind mulling over all things May. You may get them all right, you may get them all wrong but only 3 of you will win a Micro Vectron Peewee. What is a Micro Vectron Peewee? One of those spinny, hovering things isn’t it? So be quick, have a go and you could make a nuisance of yourself. Click here & satisfy your curiosity.

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

Remember issue no. 47? We were giving away five, I say FIVE copies of Flipside magazine.  The lucky winners are Rachael Fletcher (13) from Bury St. Edmunds, Danny Foster (11) from High Peak, Chris Lloyd (12) from Shrewsbury, Rebecca Brett from Willenhall and Kasia Bielska from Slough.

Well done everyone!

And remember, keep entering ‘cos next time –it could be YOU!

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3. You What? - Science facts that might make you go “Hmm?”

Seven sluggy snippets:

  1. One cubic metre of garden will be home to about 50 slugs
  2. A slug’s tentacles can detect food from more than 3m away
  3. Slugs have four noses and can sniff out four meals at the same time
  4. The average slug has 27,000 teeth
  5. Slugs love potatoes and strawberries
  6. Slugs leave a scent trail to find their way home
  7. Slugs hate lavender

A shoal of fat fish have been put on a strict diet to stop them eating themselves to death. Piranhas at Birmingham Sea Life are being fed half-portions after they put on loads of weight in just a month. A shoal of the ferocious fish are capable of devouring a whole pig in minutes and they will keep on eating if they're fed too much. The food they do get will be soaked in extra vitamins so they stay fit and healthy. What a load of bloaters!

Plus don’t expect a ‘get well soon’ card from a lobster. If Caribbean spiny lobsters detect disease in their fellow crustaceans they take evasive action even before their pals become infectious. Scientists in Virginia, USA studied the behaviour of some lobsters, some of which had been infected with a lethal virus.  Given a choice the healthy lobsters avoided moving in with infected ones, probably sniffing out the infection.  Well you know who your mates are…

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4. The Wire  – Science news straight to your Inbox…

Do you know that some people actually think that physics is boring?  Incredible isn’t it? Anyway, that’s not the case for the class of Professor Walter Smith of Haverford College in the USA.  He sings along to a ukulele to teach complex concepts. You seem a little bemused… tell you what, listen to the story and don’t be distracted because he sounds like a character from the Simpsons when he laughs.  If you are completely hooked (did someone say Hooke’s Law?) then find some more of his ditties on The singing physicist. Take it away Professor Smith! Never mind the Singing Physicist, how about Crooning Chemists or maybe Harmonising Human Biologists “Cranium, scapulas, patellas, metatarsals, metatarsals” aka Head, shoulders, knees and toes. (But you knew that already didn’t you…)

JK Rowling has said she is "absolutely thrilled" that the name of a newly-discovered dinosaur was inspired by her tales of Harry Potter. The creature, which roamed the Earth 66m years ago, has been named Dracorex hogwartsia - a reference to the school attended by Harry and his wizard pals. It had a knobbly, spiky head and its remains are on show at the Children's Museum Of Indianapolis in the US. "I am absolutely thrilled to think that Hogwarts has made a small (claw?) mark upon the fascinating world of dinosaurs," she added.

The dino's skull was discovered in the US state of South Dakota in 2003. A dinosaur expert said the creature was "a very special dinosaur that seemed at home in a Harry Potter adventure". He added that the plant-eating creature was about as big as a large horse and its most spectacular feature was his armour-plated head, with spikes, horns and crests. "I was staring at the skull last summer, and the name just popped into my head - hogwartsia," he said.

And if you fancy a dinosaur game then try this one called ‘I’m lost in time – get me out of here!’

Talking of dinosaurs…

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5. Gear for Grabs – You’ve got to be in it to win it...

Visit the latest exhibition at Newcastle’s Centre for Life and find out if the king of the dinosaurs was a fearsome hunter or a carcass-crunching scavenger? In T.rex: The Killer Question visitors come face to face with life-size robotic models and skeletons of T. rex to uncover more about the most terrifying creature ever to walk the Earth. But was he really? The jury is out, you decide - is T.rex is guilty or not! And we have two family passes to give away!

The Centre for Life has many other activities on offer too. Visitors can explore the frozen artic and the scorching desert in the ‘Our World’ exhibition, join a crew of intrepid explorers in ‘The Dome’, see awesome experiments in the Life Theatre, as well as taking a seat on the thrilling Motion Ride. If you’d like more information then contact the Centre for Life Tel: (0191) 243 8210 or email info@life.org.uk & web site here.

To win a family pass answer the following question:

What type of creature was T.rex?

Email us the answer together with your name, age and address to: randomised.news@nesta.org.uk with ‘T-REX’ as the subject. The winners will be picked at random at 5pm, on Thursday 1 June.

Good luck!

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THAT’S ALL FOR NOW

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Don’t forget that Wired-Up will be hitting your inboxes every fortnight from now on, but in the meantime, send any questions, comments, jokes or experiment ideas to: randomised.news@nesta.org.uk

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