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Friday 10th August 2007 Issue: 75

Welcome to another Haywire! Are you left-handed by any chance?  Did you know that Monday is Left-Handers Day? Make the most of it.  Let everyone know how awkward it is living in a right-handed world.  Right! What’s left?  Of course! On with Haywire!

  1. Planet Picks – August Quiz
  2. The Buzz – giggling robots and space exploration
  3. Up for Grabs – July Flipsides
  4. Crash Bang! – Shivering Coin
  5. Winners – Hands-on Oxford

1. Planet Picks – News from the world of Planet Science…

Picnic time is here at last.  The sun is shining; the rain clouds have toddled off so head for the great outdoors. Hang on a minute – where’s your picnic set? Oh no! Don’t worry, simply enter the August Picnic Quiz. If you get all the questions right you'll be in with a chance to win a clever picnic set and a drink bottle that's also a solar light.  So when it starts to get a bit dark you can still see what’s in your sandwiches. Pretty handy eh? Though your sense of smell should be able to pick out the egg ones anyhow. Phewee!

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2. The Buzz – Science news delivered to your inbox…

You know when you’re trying out a really funny joke on your pals and they just don’t laugh?  Annoying isn’t it? Well fortunately, scientists have come up with something that will always laugh at your gags – no matter how groansworthy. It's a robot with a sense of humour that has been programmed to recognise a "pun".  A pun is when we play with words which sound the same to make them funny.  For instance, ‘What’s a fish’s favourite game? Tide and Seek!’  Geddit?  Tide and Seek instead of Hide and Seek.  Now that’s worth a bit of a grin surely?  No? Right, bring in the robot!!!! When the robot, developed by US scientists, hears a pun it giggles in response. The robot has an in-built dictionary. When it hears a word that seems out of place, it searches for words which sound similar to identify the pun. Then it laughs. The scientists think it could be the first step towards a time when humans actually hang out with robots to stop them feeling lonely. How sad is that? Your only pal is some sniggering droid.

A former teacher will blast off in the space shuttle Endeavour on Wednesday. Barbara Morgan was a primary school teacher in the US but gave it up to become a full-time astronaut in 1998. Barbara and six others will lift off from Florida for an 11-day trip to the International Space Station. It will be Endeavour's first trip into space for almost five years. Can you imagine any of your teachers doing this?

Talking of space travel, a spacecraft has blasted off on a nine-month journey to Mars, where it will dig below the surface of the planet looking for life. The Phoenix probe lifted off from Nasa's launch pad at Cape Canaveral in Florida last weekend. If everything goes to plan, Phoenix should arrive on Mars in late May 2008. The mission will help space experts to work out if life exists or has ever existed on the red planet.

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

Taking it easy this summer hols? You’ll be wanting a magazine to flick through then won’t you? How about Flipside?  We’ve got FIVE copies of the July Flipside to give away. It features Bruce 'Die Hard' Willis, Harry 'Hex Hard' Potter, and Dino 'Die Out' Saurs.

If you’d like to win one, send us your name, age and address to: Hay-wire.Clubhouse@nesta.org.uk with ‘FLIPPING JULY’ as the subject. The winners will be picked at random at 5pm, on Wednesday 22nd August 2007.

Good luck!

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

Shivering coin

How’s this for a trick?  Put a coin on top of a bottle that’s just been in the freezer and see it move up and down by itself.

You will need:

  • A 2 litre plastic bottle with no lid
  • Water
  • A 2p coin
  • A freezer with enough space to put your bottle in

What to do:

  1. Put the bottle in the freezer for about 10 minutes.
  2. Dip the coin in some water.
  3. Take the bottle out of the freezer and immediately place the coin on top.
  4. Watch the coin with amazement as it starts moving on the top of the bottle, making little clicking noises. 

What’s going on?

The air inside the bottle starts to expand as it warms up. It rushes out of the top of the bottle and makes the coin move up and down.

You need the water on the coin so you have a better seal between the coin and the bottle, making the air come out a bit more forcefully. If the coin had been dry the air would just ease out and the coin wouldn’t move. (Try it if you like.)

This experiment came from Planet Science’s Little Book of Experiments.

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

Remember Issue 74 when we were giving a family ticket to Hands On, Science Oxford? They’re running a 'Science of Wizardry' workshop so mind that Dragon’s Breath. The lucky winner is Paige Bryan of Peterborough.  Congratulations Paige!

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 (the password is Sciwoof )

Bye for now!