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Friday 20th October 2006 Issue: 55

It’s Friday and we’re going completely Haywire! Half term is just around the corner – what could be nicer? What are you going to do with yourselves? Maybe you’ll find some ideas in this week’s issue – try collecting autumn leaves or maybe have a go at the Crash Bang! It’s monster fun!

  1. Planet Picks – October Quiz
  2. Web Watch – Skulls and leaves
  3. Crash Bang! – Monster Mallow
  4. Up for Grabs – Flipside magazines
  5. Winners – Rolls-Royce baseball caps

1. Planet Picks - News from the world of Planet Science...

It’s your last chance to enter the October Quiz. Hurry, hurry, there’s no time to lose. You could win a skeleton game or some other skelly-things. Just what you need for Halloween. Who won the skeleton beauty contest? No body.

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2. Web Watch – Don’t surf the Internet alone…

Talking of skeletons – how do you fancy using your head and making a skull? The Making Place online is full of activities and it has a Halloween Special – Make Your Own Skull - pdf.

Why don’t skeletons play music in church? Because they have no organs!

Plus if you’d like to throw a Monster Party then look no further than our own Planet Science Little Horrors Party. Just the thing for boils and ghouls. Try the tasty Dead Man’s Fingers. Yum yum!

Enough of spooky things – perhaps you’d just like to go out for a nature ramble instead. All that fresh air, all those beautiful autumn colours… but – oh no! – where are you going to put all your lovely leaves you’ve collected? Don’t worry, make your own leaf-collecting bag from the Nature Detectives site. Now you can identify them too!

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3. Crash Bang! – Exciting experiments for you to try at home…

Monster Mallow

You need to ask an adult to help you with this.

You will need:

  • A microwave oven
  • Marshmallows
  • A microwaveable plate

What to do:

  1. Place a marshmallow on the centre of the plate. This works really well if it is a shaped marshmallow like a ghost or a snowman. Otherwise an ordinary one will do.
  2. Set the microwave to 15 seconds on full power.
  3. Watch what happens through the microwave door. Don’t get too close – you can still see it even from half a metre away.
  4. Your marshmallow is growing! Help! help! It’s enormous!
  5. When the microwave finishes, wait a minute before taking your marshmallow out.
  6. Look at it now. It’s shrunk and gone all saggy, and it’s a bit crispy too.

What’s going on?

Marshmallows are basically made of a froth of sugar water and gelatin (that’s the stuff in jellies that makes the jelly set). Froth contains air. The microwave causes the air in the froth to warm up. These pockets of air start to get bigger and so the marshmallow starts to grow. If we heat it too much then eventually these pockets of air will grow so big that they burst and the marshmallow will collapse. This leaves a gooey mess! Even though the mallow grows in the microwave, when it cools down it shrinks and sags. This is because the air in the pockets starts to cool and take up less room. The mallow is also crispy because the heat from the microwave has caused some of the water to evaporate. Monster, eh?

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4. Up for Grabs – You’ve got to be in it to win it...

This month’s Flipside magazine is a cosmic special, so UFOs, ultraviolet tattoos (brilliant idea - you don't see them unless there's an ultra violet light on), Chinese robotics and how to tell if someone's lying. That could be very useful… who took the last biscuit? Not me! Are you sure? Yee-es. Mmmmmm, according to my Flipside you are showing all the signs of a fibber. It wasn’t me I tell you! So how come you’ve got chocolate all around your chops? Oh.

Want one? We’ve got FIVE to give away! (Flipsides not biscuits)

All you have to do is send us your name, age and address to: Hay-wire.Clubhouse@nesta.org.uk with ‘COSMIC FLIP’ as the subject. The winner will be picked at random at 5pm, on Thursday 26th October.

Good luck!

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

Remember Issue 53 when we were giving away five Rolls-Royce baseball caps? The winners are Tobias Firth (8) of Wakefield, Chris Lloyd (12) of Shrewsbury, Emma Stewart (9) of Chorley, Sophie Nicholson (7) of Glasgow and Samantha Musgrove (9) of Buxton.

Also we have the Horrible winners:

The kits are won by

Robyn Giles, Tobias Firth, Rachelle Maddison, Nick Hales, Jane Straw, Emma Willing, Elizabeth Bradley, Annie Bird, Dominic Blanchard, Angelique Good.

And the books go to:

Jo Godfrey, Ben Larke, Erin Little, Sophie Nicolson, Stefanie Tietz, Jo Willett, Fiona Wilson, Elizabeth Holman, Sharon Pirard, Sarah Parker, William Joyce, Bill Woodburn, Aaron Cross, Tani Protkov, John Marshall.

Well done everyone!

So remember – keep entering ‘cos next time it could be you!

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Information Overload

Planet Science has gone Hay-Wire and now you have too!

That’s all for this issue. The next issue of Hay-Wire will be with you in two weeks time so until then, why not ask your friends to join the Hay-Wire Club?

They can visit the Clubhouse for more details at:
http://www.planet-science.com/wired/hay-wire/clubhouse

Bye for now!