Don’t mention exams! Oh sorry we just did.  Yes it’s exam time again. So in a salute to you in your month of suffering we’ve made a quiz in your honour. Your prizes are things that may help if you find yourself undergoing the revision process again in the future… USB plug in coffee warmer/keyboard vacuum cleaner and shoulder massager kit and retro flip date clock for that authentic deadline feeling! Are you ready?  Your time starts now. You may begin.

Are you a budding filmmaker? Or have you got a great science demo or trick to amaze your friends?

The National Endowment for Science, Technology & the Arts (NESTA - Also Known as Planet Science Mothership) has teamed up with The Engineering and Technology Board (ETB) and the Institute of Physics to launch a UK wide competition challenging people to make mini movies of exciting science stuff.

The competition is open to anyone who likes science and/or film making.

All the competition entries, accompanied by a written description of the demo in case you want to have a go yourself, or recommend to a favouite science teacher, will be available at www.planet-scicast.com, do have a look if you haven't already – it's a sort of 'YouTube' of the science world. So if you fancy yourself as a budding Spielberg, a fledgling Tarantino or even a prospective Hitchcock then give it a go!

Could you persuade your local MP to plunge his hands into icy water in the name of science? Have a butcher’s at MP John Healey starring in the Blubber Glove experiment. The mind boggles.

The closing date for entries will be 4 January 2008.

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Illusory Pendulum

This effect was described by a German astronomer called Pulfrich who was blind in one eye. But you need two eyes for the trick. So perhaps he got the idea from his assistant.

You will need:

• Two eyes (both your own)
• String
• White modelling clay
• Sunglasses

What to do:

1. With the string and a blob of clay, make a pendulum that swings in a straight arc across your line of sight.
2. Sit about two metres away to view the swinging blob. It should be swinging across you - left, right, left, right...
3. Now put the sunglasses over one eye only, and look at the pendulum again. Amazingly, the pendulum will seem to swing in and out, as well as across, in an elliptical orbit - round and round and round.
4. Try again with the other eye looking through the glasses - the pendulum's orbit reverses direction.

 What’s going on?

When you cover your eye with a filter (like your sunglasses) it becomes more sensitive to light. The pupil gets bigger to allow more light in, and the signals to the brain are delayed slightly, to allow more light to enter the eye (just like a camera with a slower shutter speed).

The eye with the dark glass sees the moving pendulum delayed in time and therefore in a different position from the other eye. The brain puts the two positions together, fooling you into thinking the blob is moving in and out in an ellipse. This is similar to when 3-D films put two images together to fool you into thinking things are coming out of the screen.

This activity came from Planet Science’s Little Book of Experiments and was submitted by Professor Richard Gregory FRS from the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Bristol. He’s also famous for his many highly successful books and work with ‘hands-on’ science centres, most notably founding the Exploratory, Bristol.

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