Welcome to Bangkok Patana School Science Department

'Kryptonite' discovered in mine

2007-04-25T08:16:00.000+07:00

Kryptonite is no longer just the stuff of fiction feared by caped superheroes.
A new mineral matching its unique chemistry - as described in the film Superman Returns - has been identified in a mine in Serbia.
According to movie and comic-book storylines, kryptonite is supposed to sap Superman's powers whenever he is exposed to its large green crystals.
The real mineral is white and harmless, says Dr Chris Stanley, a mineralogist at London's Natural History Museum.
"I'm afraid it's not green and it doesn't glow either - although it will react to ultraviolet light by fluorescing a pinkish-orange," he told BBC News.
Rock heist
Researchers from mining group Rio Tinto discovered the unusual mineral and enlisted the help of Dr Stanley when they could not match it with anything known previously to science.
Once the London expert had unravelled the mineral's chemical make-up, he was shocked to discover this formula was already referenced in literature - albeit fictional literature.
"Towards the end of my research I searched the web using the mineral's chemical formula - sodium lithium boron silicate hydroxide - and was amazed to discover that same scientific name, written on a case of rock containing kryptonite stolen by Lex Luther from a museum in the film Superman Returns.
"The new mineral does not contain fluorine (which it does in the film) and is white rather than green but, in all other respects, the chemistry matches that for the rock containing kryptonite."
The mineral is relatively hard but is very small grained. Each individual crystal is less than five microns (millionths of a metre) across.
Elementary clash
Identifying its atomic structure required sophisticated analytical facilities at Canada's National Research Council and the assistance and expertise of its researchers, Dr Pamela Whitfield and Dr Yvon Le Page.
"'Knowing a material's crystal structure means scientists can calculate other physical properties of the material, such as its elasticity or thermochemical properties," explained Dr Le Page.
"Being able to analyse all the properties of a mineral, both chemical and physical, brings us closer to confirming that it is indeed unique."
Finding out that the chemical composition of a material was an exact match to an invented formula for the fictitious kryptonite "was the coincidence of a lifetime," he added.
The mineral cannot be called kryptonite under international nomenclature rules because it has nothing to do with krypton - a real element in the Periodic Table that takes the form of a gas.
Power possibilities
Instead, it will be formally named Jadarite when it is described in the European Journal of Mineralogy later this year.
Jadar is the name of the place where the Serbian mine is located.
Dr Stanley said that if deposits occurred in sufficient quantity it could have some commercial value.
It contains boron and lithium - two valuable elements with many applications, he explained.
"Borosilicate glasses are used to encapsulate processed radioactive waste, and lithium is used in batteries and in the pharmaceutical industries."

Rope around the Earth

2007-04-23T21:01:00.000+07:00

You have a piece of rope that just fits around the Earth. If you put 1 metre high sticks right around the equator and lay the rope on top, how much longer does the rope need to be to make ends meet? Answer below as a comment.

Two Candle Riddle

2007-04-17T10:03:00.000+07:00

A candle flame consumes oxygen and produces water vapour and carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is heavier than air. But cover two candles with a jar and the taller one goes out first … why?

The Rock in a Boat in a Pool problem

2007-04-12T22:08:00.000+07:00

Post your answer and explanation as a comment below.

This problem is famous for stumping Robert Oppenheimer, one of the most famous physicists of the 20th Century and two of his physicist pals George Gamow and Felix Bloch so don't be afraid to try! You can demonstrate and prove the answer with some plastic containers and a rock! Oppenheimer directed the Manhattan Project which led to the development of the first atomic bomb. After seeing the first ever explosion of an atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert, he said ‘we knew the world would not be the same’. He later opposed the development of an even more powerful hydrogen bomb.

Science to save your life!

2007-03-31T15:15:00.000+07:00

Picture the scene – you're laid out on a raft, the sun is beating down, your mouth feels like the bottom of a birdcage. "Water! Water!" you gasp through parched lips. The seawater surrounding you mocks back "Hah! Try drinking this matey and you'll know about it!"
But wait! What's this? You managed to grab a large bowl, clingfilm, sticky tape, a glass and a small rock before the ship sank (!). Thank goodness for that! Now all you need is to make a solar still…

You will need:

large bowl

short glass or cup

plastic wrap

small rock

pitcher of water

salt

long spoon for stirring

What to do:

First make saltwater by adding salt to fresh water. Stir the water until the salt dissolves. Now pour about two inches of saltwater in a large bowl. Take an empty glass and put it in the bowl. The top of the glass should be shorter than the top of the bowl, but higher than the saltwater. Put clingfilm over the top of the bowl. You may need to use tape to make sure the seal is tight. The last step is to put something heavy right in the centre of the clingfilm, over the empty glass. That will weigh the plastic down and help you collect the water. Now you've made a solar still. It's called a still because it distills, or purifies, water. Leave your still outside in the sun. Leave it alone for a few hours, or even a whole day. The longer you leave it out, the more water you'll collect. When you're ready to check your still, take the plastic wrap off and look at the water that's collected in the cup. Do you think it's salty or fresh? Taste it – it's fresh! (make sure all the items are cleaned thotoughly before you try this experiment though!)

What's going on?

Rays from the sun heat up the salty water in the bowl. When the water gets warm, it evaporates and becomes a gas. When the gas rises and hits the clingfilm, it turns back into water droplets. Eventually, gravity makes the water droplets roll down the clingfilm towards the rock. Then the water droplets slide off the clingfilm into the glass. The salt doesn't evaporate, so it gets left behind in the bowl. Water evaporates in the same way from lakes, rivers, and oceans. The water heats up, turns into a gas, and then condenses to fall back down as rain. Now, can you distill fresh water from other liquids like cola or orange juice?

Did you know?

This can also be done with urine if you're in the desert and water is hard to come by. If you do not have a pot, you can just dig a hole in the ground, do your business in the hole, place a glass/container in the middle and cover with something (plastic bag works). The natural heat of the sand will evaporate the clean water into the glass. You never know, it may save your life!

Egg Engraving

2007-03-31T14:36:00.000+07:00

This is like engraving in reverse i.e. your name will stand out in relief from the shell rather than be etched into it.

You will need:

Hard boiled egg
Wax crayon
White vinegar
Large glass or bowl (big enough to hold the egg)

What to do:

Ask an adult to hard boil an egg for you. Print your initials or your first name, large and fairly thick, on the shell of a hard boiled egg with the wax crayon. Now put the egg in a glass large enough to hold it and add enough fresh white vinegar to cover it. Tiny bubbles should form on the egg which show that the acid in the vinegar is reacting with the shell. The shell under the waxy letters is protected from this acid action. In an hour or two, when the bubbling stops, replace the now neutralized vinegar with a fresh supply. After another two hours wash off the egg under running water. Rub your fingers over the letters and they should stand out in relief. You can even try to GENTLY remove the wax coating with a soft brush and scouring powder under running water.

What's going on?

An average eggshell is 2.35mm thick. It's made of 3.5% protein, 1.5% water, and 95% calcium carbonate mineral. It is this mineral that reacts with the acetic acid in vinegar. The wax protects the shell from coming into contact with the vinegar. If half of the shell has dissolved during the four hours, then it has only about a 1.25mm thickness left. So be careful!

How good are your vectors?

2007-03-27T23:14:00.000+07:00

Warning: do not play this game if you are easily offended

Energy for the Future lecture

2007-03-23T06:54:00.000+07:00

Mr Anders Ihle from ECC Care Thailand came to present an Environmental Technologies for the Future lecture as part of the Science and Technology Week. Click on the image above to watch the talk, or download the podcast below to listen to it. His powerpoint is also available on a link below. Thanks to Mr Ihle for his highly entertaining and informative lecture. If you have any questions for him you can email him at andersihle@yahoo.com

Right click here, "save target as" to download the podcast (98MB *.mp3)

Rick click here, "save target as" to download the powerpoint used in the lecture (14MB *.ppt)

The Winner, the Thief and Science Week

2007-03-20T13:21:00.000+07:00

Congratulations to Roy in 8A for he was the first to solve the finger print jigsaw last week - he must have sent it at lunchtime on the first day to beat the rest - do you know who's fingerprint it was? Roy, come to the Science office and collect your prize from Mr Taylor. The thief was named today as Dr Macgregor - once again thanks for all the emails accusing me and the furtive looks on the corridor because you thought it was me all week long. Dr M spent two days in jail over the weekend after analysis of video footage revealed this photo of her in lab 2. As punishment she has to do community service as a Chemistry teacher here at Bangkok Patana school for the rest of the year - she is appealing against the severity of the sentence. Don't forget to thank your Science teacher and especially the Science technicians (Khun A, Khun Gun, and Khun Pornpen) for all the exciting activities that were prepared for you last week. If you have any photos from Science Week that you would like to share then please email me.

Einstein's box snares photon

2007-03-20T08:43:00.000+07:00

In 1927, Albert Einstein conceived of a box in which light was trapped and a single light particle, or photon, was released in a theoretical experiment to measure the relationship between mass and energy.

Eighty years on, French physicists say they have created Einstein's box: a device just 2.7 centimetres big that snares a photon, enabling it to be monitored from birth to death.

They publish their work today in the journal Nature.

Photons are arguably the ultimate existential particle in physics. By switching on a light bulb, you release a million billion of them every second.

But as soon as you see a photon, it dies, as its contact with the retina expends the energy that made it exist.

"Photons are easy to detect. You do it yourself, every second for instance when you are looking at a computer screen," says co-author Professor Jean-Michel Raimond of France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS).

"But you do this only once. It's post-mortem analysis. We, though, can now analyse it in real time, while the photon is still alive."

The box is a cavity with walls made from ultra-reflective, superconducting mirrors able to trap a photon for about a seventh of a second.

That may not seem much but it is worth considering that, in the same time, a free photon would travel about a tenth of the distance from the Earth to the Moon.

A new way to count photons

The conventional way of counting photons is by a light detector that works by absorbing the energy by impacting particles. But the collision destroys the photons, so what is needed is a 'transparent' counter.

The French team says it has found the answer in a stream of rubidium atoms, which cross the box in which the photon is trapped.

Photons have an electrical field that slightly changes the energy levels of the atom, but in this case, not enough to let the atom absorb energy from the field.

When an atom crosses the photon's electrical field, this causes a tiny delay in the electrons that orbit the atom's nucleus.

The delay is measurable, using the technique of modern atomic clocks, which use electrons' orbit as a 'pendulum' to provide a precise time.

Quantum 'masterpiece'

In a commentary also published by Nature, Professor Ferdinand Schmidt-Kaler, a quantum physicist at Germany's University of Ulm, describes the achievement as an "experimental masterwork".

He says it has major implications for quantum computing, a field that proponents claim will make one of today's supercomputers look like an abacus.

Instead of using the binary digits 0 and 1 to hold information, quantum computing is based on a principle of quantum mechanics, changes of state, called superposition, that occur at the atomic level.

Quantum information, or a qubit, can be a 0 or 1 or simultaneously as both 0 and 1, amounting to a potential boost in data storage, but only useful so long as it can be controlled and accessed.

Photons, atoms and ions have been used as qubit carriers in this area of research.

The experiment demonstrates that "a stream of atomic qubits can be fully controlled by the qubit state of a trapped photon", says Schmidt-Kaler.

Just another ordinary day in the Science faculty......

2007-03-16T14:32:00.000+07:00

Science Week: Have you signed up for making explosive bubbles?

2007-03-15T11:53:00.000+07:00

Science Week: Have you signed up? See the notice board 2nd floor near lab 5 (Physics) for exciting lunchtime activities

2007-03-13T14:41:00.000+07:00

Science week: Finger print challenge

2007-03-09T09:13:00.000+07:00

The year 7's will become CSI's trying to find out which science teacher stole the delicious ice cream as part of the Science Week. Can you solve this jigsaw fingerprint of one of the Scientists? Which member of the Science Department do you think it is? Click on the image to start solving the jigsaw. Post your guess as a comment below. First completed jigsaw as a screen print emailed to brta@patana.ac.th will win a prize!

National Science and Engineering Week 9-18th March

2007-03-09T08:08:00.000+07:00

National Science and Engineering Week 9-18th March

2007-03-08T08:02:00.000+07:00

Only two more days to go - have you signed up or any cool lunchtime experiments next week? See the notice board on the Physics side stairs 2nd floor for more details.

Vote for you favourite experiment here

National Science and Engineering Week 9-18th March

2007-03-06T07:57:00.000+07:00

Here is the next experiment for you to watch...........

Vote for you favourite experiment here

Can you make these Water Spikes?

2007-03-05T13:36:00.000+07:00

Here’s something to do for National Science and Engineering Week 2007! Now before we start I have a confession. I tried this out and it didn’t work. Distilled water yes, freezer at minus 11.5 degrees C hmmmm, maybe (didn’t measure it at the time). So I am throwing down the gauntlet to anyone who wants to give it a go. Send me a photo of your ice spike with your face and first name on a piece of paper next to it. Just so that I have proof y’understand – yes those Google Images are soooo useful at times aren’t they? All those entering will be put in a draw for a pack of AQA GCSE Sciences Flashcards courtesy of Hodder Murray (www.hoddereducation.co.uk) and a 100 baht snack card.

You will need:

Distilled water (you can get this from a petrol station)
Ice cube tray
Freezer

What to do:

Fill the ice cube tray with distilled water.
Place in a freezer whose air temperature is at least -11.5 degrees C.
Leave for an hour and a half.
You should see a short spike of ice protruding from each cube.

What’s going on?

The short explanation is this: as the ice freezes fast under supercooled conditions, the surface can get covered except for a small hole. Water expands when it freezes. As freezing continues, the expanding ice under the surface forces the remaining water up through the hole and it freezes around the edge forming a hollow spike. Eventually, the whole thing freezes and the spike is left.
But you may find fuller explanations in the following websites:

You, too, can grow ice-cube spikes in your own freezer!

Ice Spikes

Got Spikes on Your Ice Cubes?

See video

Diagram of how spikes are formed

The draw will take place at 5pm on Wednesday 21st March.

Eclipse set to be 'best in years'

2007-03-03T12:59:00.000+07:00

Skywatchers eagerly awaiting Saturday's total lunar eclipse say that the spectacle could be the "best in years". The eclipse begins at 2018 GMT, with the Moon totally immersed in the shadow of the Earth between 2244 and 2358 GMT. During "totality", only light that has been filtered through the Earth's atmosphere reaches the Moon's surface, making it appear a reddish colour.
The eclipse will be visible from the whole of Europe, Africa, South America, and eastern parts of the US and Canada. "They are beautiful events," said Robert Massey, spokesman for the UK's Royal Astronomical Society. "They have a really romantic feel to them as you look up because the Moon, which is normally pearly white, takes on this reddish colour." He added that it was totally safe to observe and no protective filters were needed because the Moon would actually be less bright than during a normal full moon.

See where the eclipse will be visible

National Science and Engineering Week 9-18th March

2007-02-24T07:55:00.002+07:00

The last one for this week - remember to check for me next week!

Vote for you favourite experiment here

National Science and Engineering Week 9-18th March

2007-02-24T07:55:00.001+07:00

Another one for you to vote for:

Vote for you favourite experiment here

National Science and Engineering Week 9-18th March

2007-02-24T07:46:00.000+07:00

Have you been watching these experiments? Which one is your favourite so far? You can vote for them online (see link under the video). Here is the 3rd of 8 (see Feb archives for previous experiments).

Vote for you favourite experiment here

National Science and Engineering Week 9-18th March

2007-02-24T07:44:00.000+07:00

Vote for you favourite experiment here

National Science and Engineering Week 9-18th March

2007-02-24T07:34:00.001+07:00

Vote for you favourite experiment here

A-maze-ing onions

2007-02-20T07:08:00.000+07:00

You will need:

An onion (ideally already sprouting)
A shoe box
Another spare cardboard box
Strong scissors
Sticky tape

What to do:

First build a maze for your onion!
Use your spare cardboard box to cut rectangles about the same size as the smaller side of the shoe box. These will be the dividers inside your maze. You need at least two but you could make more if you like.
For each divider, cut a ‘window’ in the cardboard about 3 cm square. It will make the maze more interesting if they are in different positions on each divider.
Cut an ‘exit’ door for the onion shoot at one end of the shoe box.
Put the onion at the other end of the shoe box..
Fit the dividers into the box, spacing them out between the onion and the exit. Try to put them in so the onion will have to change direction to get through each hole.
Try to find a sunny place to leave it (so the sun can shine on the exit) but where it won’t be disturbed.
Leave for about 3 weeks and then check to see how it’s getting on.

What’s going on?

The sprouts on your onion should have started to find their way out of the maze. They are growing towards the light coming through the exit. Biologists call this phototropism. You might have noticed this already with indoor plants. They grow towards the light, and can get very lopsided unless you turn their pots round occasionally.

So how does the onion ‘know’ where the light is, and how does it grow towards it? The tips of plant shoots contain a growth hormone called an auxin, which makes the shoot grow faster. But light destroys the auxin, so it only works on the side that doesn’t have any light. The side without any light grows longer and the shoot ends up bending towards the light.

You might have also noticed that plants without much light grow long and spindly. This is because there is lots of auxin in the plant and it grows fast – but the plant won’t be very healthy because it needs light to make food for itself by photosynthesis.

More ideas

Try seeing if a sprouting potato can find its way through the maze. Have a race between the potato and the onion to see which shoots grow quicker.

You could grow plants from identical seeds, one in the dark and one in the light to compare them. Look especially at the colour of the leaves. Think of ways to test whether the auxin is only in the tips of the shoots or all along the shoots.

Lion vs Leopard vs Hyena

2007-02-16T09:08:00.000+07:00

Who will win a tug-of-war between these three?

Bullfrog vs Spider vs Snake vs Bird.............

2007-02-10T23:58:00.000+07:00

30 hornets get their revenge on 30,000 bees...

2007-02-08T07:30:00.000+07:00

Animation vs Animator

2007-02-03T08:02:00.000+07:00

Ok so it's not related to Science, but I enjoyed this so much I thought I'd share it with you. Enjoy!

Bees cooking hornets.........

2007-01-30T08:37:00.000+07:00

Watch this amazing clip of bees 'cooking' an invading hornet by vibrating their bodies!!!

Do you know your elementary particles?

2007-01-23T22:41:00.000+07:00

There was a time in the last century when the only subatomic particles we knew were the proton, neutron, and electron. But in the past 40 years or so physicists working at particle accelerators—or "atom smashers" in the lay lingo—have ferreted out a menagerie of so-called fundamental particles, everything from the charm and strange quarks to the gluon and tau neutrino. In this gallery, view visual representations of the most important fundamental particle discoveries—discoveries that have deepened physicists' understanding of the building blocks of nature as well as led to their appreciation of key aspects of string theory, such as supersymmetry. Read more...... and click here to see a larger version of the animation above.

A Theory of Everything?

2007-01-23T22:24:00.000+07:00

Starting at an everyday scale, travel by powers of 100 down into the infinitesimally itsy-bitsy world of strings. In this excerpt from his book The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene explains why string theory might hold the key to unifying the four forces of nature.

How can you lift an icecube with a matchstick?

2007-01-23T21:52:00.000+07:00

You will need:

An ice cube
A matchstick
Salt

What to do:

Sprinkle some salt on top of the icecube.
Place the matchstick lengthwise on top of the icecube with part of the stick extending.
Wait a few seconds.
Now try lifting the matchstick up.
The matchstick is frozen to the ice. So the icecube can be lifted using a matchstick.

What's going on?

The matchstick becomes attached to the ice cube because the salt lowers the freezing point of water and melts the ice. The top of the ice cube quickly re-freezes which traps the matchstick. Simple eh? Plus a great trick that you can do whilst waiting for your food to arrive next time you're out for dinner.

See more experiments like this on the practical of the week link.

Can a human skydiver fall faster than a peregrine falcon?

2007-01-22T12:47:00.000+07:00

What is the terminal velocity of a human and a peregrine falcon? Which is greatest? Watch this amazing 5 min clip to see which animal wins the incredible race!

A freak of nature? See the blood squirting lizard...........

2007-01-19T08:05:00.000+07:00

Protection for 'weirdest' species

2007-01-17T07:30:00.000+07:00

A conservation programme for some of the world's most bizarre and unusual creatures has been launched by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL). Read on.......

Anti-cancer chicken eggs produced

2007-01-15T19:22:00.000+07:00

Chickens that can lay eggs containing cancer-fighting proteins have been created by scientists in Scotland. Read on........

Improve your motor skills.................

2007-01-11T11:24:00.000+07:00

Easy at first, just try the later levels! Press 'S' to turn off the sound.

Wireless power for all your Christmas presents!!!!

2006-12-23T19:09:00.000+07:00

1) Power from mains to antenna, which is made of copper
2) Antenna resonates at a frequency of 6.4MHz, emitting electromagnetic waves
3) 'Tails' of energy from antenna 'tunnel' up to 5m (16.4ft)
4) Electricity picked up by laptop's antenna, which must also be resonating at 6.4MHz. Energy used to re-charge device
5) Energy not transferred to laptop re-absorbed by source antenna. People/other objects not affected as not resonating at 6.4MHz

More details on this link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6129460.stm

Now you know how one of these works!!!!!

2006-12-21T15:39:00.000+07:00

Could Santa deliver gifts to all the world's children in one night?

2006-12-18T21:37:00.000+07:00

Of course he can, with help from Nasa, Einstein and 360,000 reindeer. Scientists have been wrestling with the feasibility of Santa's job description since the 1850s. The latest thinking is that delivering one kilogram of presents to the world's 2.1 billion children (regardless of religious denomination) is entirely realistic, with a little lateral thinking.

Scientists at the American space agency, Nasa, reckon the man from Lapland relies on an antenna that picks up electromagnetic signals from children's brains to know what presents they want. Assuming an average of 2.5 children per house Mr Claus must make 842 million stops tonight to fill his orders.

By allowing a quarter of a mile between each stop, he must travel 218 million miles with about a thousandth of a second to squeeze down each chimney, unload a stocking, eat a mince pie, swig cooking sherry and get his sleigh airborne again. To achieve this he must travel at 1,280 miles per second. Travelling east to west, he can stretch Christmas Day to 31 hours.

To have enough presents, Santa's sleigh must carry 400,000 ton of gifts. With the average non-turbocharged reindeer capable of pulling only 150kg, Father Christmas would need 360,000 reindeer to heave his vehicle skyward.

The cavalcade would have a mass of about 500,000 tons which, at the required speed, would cause each reindeer to vaporise in a sonic boom flattening every tree and building within 30 miles. Father Christmas would have a mass of two million kilograms, causing him to combust when his reindeer come to their sudden halt. Piffle.

First, Einstein's theory of relativity dictates that the faster an object travels, the slower time appears to pass. So at the speed he is travelling, .0001 of a second allows Santa to perform his tasks at leisure pace. Second, as an expert in quantum physics, Mr Claus knows wormholes in the fabric of universe allow him to move instantly from one dimension and place to another. His sleigh is a time-machine powered by an unknown fuel which any economy on the world would have on its Christmas list.

Exploding Oatcakes - more energy than TNT!!!!!!!

2006-12-12T07:20:00.000+07:00

Hard to believe? The facts are easy to find. From published data, we can find that TNT yields about 4.25 megajoules of energy per kilogram when detonated, fairly typical for a high explosive.

Next, off to the kitchen cupboard. The oatcake packet tells me that oatcakes yield 18 megajoules per kilogram. This is more than 4 times as much energy as in the TNT.

So why are oatcakes so much less spectacular than TNT? It's because explosions are not so much about releasing a lot of energy, they're about releasing it very quickly. TNT certainly does that – an oatcake-sized amount of TNT releases its energy in a fraction of a microsecond. This creates huge gas pressures, and hence an explosion. An oatcake, on the other hand, takes minutes to burn.

Now there's one thing I haven't mentioned. Explosives include everything needed for the reactions that make them go bang, but an oatcake needs a source of oxygen. We really ought to include the mass of the oxygen along with the mass of the oatcake. The packet says that oatcakes contain a lot of carbohydrate, with about a third as much fat. Carbohydrate needs about its own mass of oxygen to burn, and fat needs about 3-4 times as much. It works out that a burning oatcake consumes about 1.5 times its own mass in oxygen. So the 18 megajoules that we get from a kilogram of oatcakes actually comes from about 2.5 kilograms of material. Even so, it still beats TNT.

There's another important factor: whereas the chemicals in explosives are already exactly in position and ready for action, the oxygen that an oatcake needs is not inside the oatcake. The rate at which the oatcake burns depends on how fast we can supply oxygen. If we could somehow incorporate enough oxygen right inside the oatcake, it might indeed go off with a bang. Would that make it a cracker?

Can a pressure washer peel off your skin - watch and find out!

2006-12-12T06:45:00.000+07:00

Ever wondered how a catherine wheel firework works?

2006-12-07T21:49:00.000+07:00

Make amazing sounds with simple objects.............

2006-12-07T05:22:00.000+07:00

Why does a champagne bottle have a concave bottom?

2006-12-06T07:19:00.000+07:00

IB Physics trip to Dreamworld

2006-12-04T19:51:00.000+07:00

No comments please! The year 12 biologists are out on their field trip at the moment (no wonder it is so quiet) and you may be wondering if the physicists go somewhere. Well, a couple of weekends back they went measuring, recording, calculating and experimenting (including measuring the g-force of each ride with a home made g-force device) at dreamworld. Mr Roff asked for them to send some interesting photos and this is what he they sent him. Who said physics was boring?

This guy has mastered the laws of parabolic motion......

2006-11-23T22:22:00.000+07:00

Can you bend a steel rod with your throat? Don't try this at home....

2006-11-23T22:13:00.000+07:00

What speed is needed to cut down plants?

2006-11-22T21:36:00.000+07:00

I did not know ping pong balls were so flammable....

2006-11-21T05:31:00.000+07:00

And now the everyday light bulb in slow motion

2006-11-20T21:45:00.000+07:00

Ever wondered how a fire extinguisher works?

2006-11-18T14:26:00.000+07:00

Co Science B3 Support & Movement - what type of lever is a pig's trotter?

2006-11-16T11:25:00.000+07:00

Spooky numbers

2006-11-14T07:14:00.000+07:00

Halloween has been and gone but this one remains intriguing - can you tell us how it works? Comments welcome! Turn on your speakers.

How good is your hand - eye coordination?

2006-11-10T09:13:00.000+07:00

Co-science B10 Coordination and Response - how quickly can you park this car? 20 seconds is my best - post your time!

The Nucleus Game

2006-11-08T21:05:00.000+07:00

Ok, I had several complaints that the last game wasted your time. Try this one then - it gets difficult when you start to make covalent bonds (sharing electrons). See for yourself.

Beat my score of 2235m - there is some science in there - honest!

2006-11-07T18:12:00.000+07:00

Year 7 Tutorial - Anti Smoking

2006-11-06T16:14:00.000+07:00

Around 114,000 people in the UK die every year as a result of smoking-related illnesses. Cigarettes contain around 4000 different chemicals, either gases or particles - the most additive of which is nicotine. Nicotine reaches the brain within 20 seconds and creates a dependency. In their tutorial Year 7 students will see the harmful chemical produced in just a single cigarette - ask them to tell you what they found out. Click this link to find out more:

Teen repellent

2006-11-04T10:00:00.000+07:00

A device that repels teenagers has won the peace prize at this year's Ig Nobels - the spoof alternative to the rather more sober Nobel prizes. Welshman Howard Stapleton's device makes a high-pitched noise inaudible to adults but annoying to teenagers.

Other winners included a US-Israeli study into how a finger up the rectum cures hiccups and a report into why woodpeckers do not get headaches.

All the research is real and published in often prestigious journals.

Unlike the recipients of the more illustrious awards, Ig Nobel winners get no cash reward.

Nevertheless eight of the 10 winners this year paid their own way to receive their prizes in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Marc Abrahams, editor of science humour magazine Annals of Improbable Research, which co-sponsors the awards, said: "The prizes are intended to celebrate the unusual, honour the imaginative - and spur people's interest in science, medicine and technology."

Real-life Nobel Laureates demonstrated winning research
The winners are given a one-minute acceptance speech, the time policed by a loud eight-year-old girl.

This year's winners included:

Maths: How many photos must be taken to almost ensure no-one in a group shot has their eyes closed, by Nic Svenson and Piers Barnes

Ornithology: Why woodpeckers do not get headaches, by Ivan Schwab and the late Philip RA May (see photo)

Nutrition: Why dung beetles are fussy eaters, by Wasmia al-Houty and Faten al-Mussalam

Acoustics: Why the sound of fingernails scraping on blackboards is so annoying, by D Lynn Halpern, Randolph Blake and James Hillenbrand

Medicine: The Termination of Intractable Hiccups with Digital Rectal Massage, by Francis Fesmire, Majed Odeh, Harry Bassan and Arie Oliven.

Can you swim faster in water or syrup?

2006-11-03T07:00:00.000+07:00

It's a question that has taxed generations of the finest minds in physics: do humans swim slower in syrup than in water? And since you ask, the answer's no.

Scientists have filled a swimming pool with a syrupy mixture and proved it."What appealed was the bizarreness of the idea," says Edward Cussler of the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, who led the experiment.

It's a question that also fascinated his student Brian Gettelfinger, a competitive swimmer who narrowly missed out on a place at this summer's Olympic Games in Athens.Cussler and Gettelfinger took more than 300 kilograms of guar gum, an edible thickening agent found in salad dressings, ice cream and shampoo, and dumped it into a 25-metre swimming pool, creating a gloopy liquid twice as thick as water.

"It looked like snot," says Cussler.

The pair then asked 16 volunteers, a mix of both competitive and recreational swimmers, to swim in a regular pool and in the guar syrup. Whatever strokes they used, the swimmers' times differed by no more than 4%, with neither water nor syrup producing consistently faster times, the researchers report in the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Journal 1.

Planning permission

The most troublesome part of the experiment was getting permission to do it in the first place. Cussler and Gettelfinger had to obtain 22 separate kinds of approval, including persuading the local authorities that it was okay to put their syrup down the drain afterwards.But it was worth the hassle, Cussler says, not least because his quest for an answer made him something of a celebrity on campus. "The whole university was arguing about it," he recalls. "It was absolutely hilarious."But while it might sound like a trivial question, the principle is actually fundamental.

Isaac Newton and his contemporary Christiaan Huygens argued the toss over it back in the 17th century while Newton was writing his Principia Mathematica, which sets out many of the laws of physics. Newton thought that an object's speed through a fluid would depend on its viscosity, whereas Huygens thought it would not. In the end, Newton included both versions in his text.Hamstrung by their lack of access to guar gum or competitive swimmers, Newton's and Huygens' work was mainly theoretical. Cussler's demonstration shows that Huygens was right, at least for human-sized projectiles.

The reason, explains Cussler, is that while you experience more "viscous drag" (basically friction from your movement through the fluid) as the water gets thicker, you generate more forwards force from every stroke. The two effects cancel each other out.

That's not always the case. Below a certain threshold of speed and size, viscous drag becomes the dominant force, making gloopy fluids are more difficult to swim through. Had Cussler done his experiment on swimming bacteria instead of humans, he would have recorded much slower times in syrup than in water.

But for humans, speed depends not on what you swim in, but on what shape you are. Once the effects on thrust and friction have been cancelled out, the predominant force that remains is 'form drag'. This is due to the frontal area presented by a body - try running with a large newspaper held in front of you and see how much more difficult it is.

So the perfect swimmer, whether in water or syrup, has powerful muscles but a narrow frontal profile.

"The best swimmer should have the body of a snake and the arms of a gorilla," recommends Cussler.

The journal that published the study is the American Institute of Chemical Engineers Journal, not the American Institute of Chemistry and Engineering Journal as initially reported.

Scientists, writers and the Archbishop of Canterbury reveal their favourite science books

2006-11-01T14:35:00.000+07:00

Jim Al-Khalili, theoretical physicist, University of Surrey
I have given this some thought and it is a toss-up between two books.

The first is Dan Dennett's Consciousness Explained. As a physicist I enjoy reading about something I do not know much about. Dennett's book really opened up a whole new world for me. His rational, mechanistic and reductionist view of consciousness and how it manifests itself was a revelation. It is most likely not the whole answer, particularly in the light of research over the past decade or so in AI, cognitive studies and neuroscience. But I found it incredibly convincing and enlightening.

The second is Roger Penrose's Shadows of the mind. This was Penrose's first popular science book and sparked worldwide interest linking many ideas in quantum mechanics, the nature of time, artificial intelligence and the root of consciousness. I did not, and do not, agree with Penrose's main thesis on the quantum origins of consciousness in the brain. But there was so much more to this book, on non-computability, the meaning of quantum mechanics and its connection to other fields of physics that it profoundly affected my thinking.

If I had to choose, I would go for Dennett though.

Philip Ball, author
I'd like to suggest two candidates. The first is a widely recognized classic: D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson's On Growth and Form, first published in 1917 and then in revised and expanded form in 1942 (that version is available as a Dover reprint, 1992). Not all of the science in this book is accurate, and some is wrong. Much of it has been superseded, and in fact Thompson was writing well ahead of his time, before the tools and concepts were really developed to tackle many of the problems he considered. All the same, it is a great book. For one thing, it challenges the notion, still apparent today, that somehow biology escapes the constraints that apply to the rest of the physical world: Thompson was refuting the tendency in his time to explain all biological form with the black box of Darwinism. It shows the value of taking a synthetic view that cuts across scientific disciplines. In short, it provides nothing less than a new way of looking at the natural world. And it is written beautifully and with stunning erudition.

The second is barely known: Norbert Wiener's Invention (written in the 1950s but not published until 1994 by MIT Press). Wiener is best known for cybernetics, but here he makes an elegant case for the importance of the often overlooked creative strand of science evident in the process of invention. He explains how invention can be, and has been, nurtured, and what can go wrong in an intellectual climate to suppress it. To my mind, this book shows why the claim that science is somehow different from technology is not just wrong but pernicious.

Susan Blackmore, psychologist, writer and broadcaster
I tried to think up something original or quirky but in the end I have to say my favourite is The Selfish Gene. It taught me, in beautiful language, the simplicity and power of Darwin's dangerous idea - "the best idea anybody ever had" and inspired all my subsequent work on memes.

David Deutsch, physicist, University of Oxford
I'm afraid I find it impossible to choose between Gödel, Escher, Bach and The Selfish Gene. Both are examples of perfection in popular science writing: they deal with issues that are deep and important, but subtle enough that they are usually only discussed by specialists, and they make them accessible to the general reader through the authors' superlative writing skill and total command of their subjects.

K Eric Drexler, nanotechnology pioneer, researcher and author
Mathematics, Form and Function by Saunders Mac Lane. Written by a pioneer of category theory, which links parallel structures across all areas of mathematics, this book provides a survey and integration of mathematics as a whole. It both shows the roots of mathematics in concrete human experience and explores the content of fields at the heights of abstraction, emphasizing their surprising connections. This is a book to be skimmed, then read, then revisited and studied.

Marcus du Sautoy, Professor of Mathematics, University of Oxford
Hardy's A Mathematician's Apology is a book I was recommended by teacher at school to read when I was 12 or 13. It was a revelation. It brought alive what mathematics is really about. It was like hearing real music for the first time after practising scales and arpeggios for years. I think everyone has a sense of what the chemist, physicist or biologist is investigating in their laboratories but giving someone access to the mathematician's lab is a much tougher job. Hardy shows that mathematics is as much a creative art as a useful science and that really appealed to someone who loved music as much as numbers. He gives two proofs in the book: they are simple but rapier-like in their logic. Being exposed to the power of this logical language to prove things with 100% certainty was very empowering to an adolescent whose world was constantly shifting.

As an adult it is a book I love and hate because it comes with a very mixed message. Anyone who wants to emulate Hardy and bring the subject alive for others lives under the spectre of the opening sentence of the book:
“It is a melancholy experience for a professional mathematician to find himself writing about mathematics. The function of a mathematician is to do something, to prove new theorems, to add to mathematics, and not to talk about what he or other mathematicians have done.”
I have spent my adult life trying to prove Hardy wrong: that it is possible to create new mathematics alongside providing access for others to this magical world.

Richard Fortey, senior paleontologist, Natural History Museum
I would like to nominate Oliver Sacks' book The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat. Sacks manages to explain much about how the human brain works, but in a way which is absolutely gripping as literature. He avoids the pitfalls of becoming too precious - everything is perfectly judged. He also has the prize for the most intriguing title - out Goulding Gould!

Baroness Susan Greenfield, Director of the Royal Institution
How to Build a Time Machine, by Paul Davies. Hugely original in terms of format. It looks easy – like a picture book – but introduces you to lots of difficult concepts.

Steve Jones, Professor of Genetics, University College London
To me one obvious winner - Charles Darwin's The Voyage of the Beagle. No other book so conveys the excitement of doing science, getting results and having a wonderful time, all at the same time. And, as well as a great science book, it's one of the best travel books ever written, with more adventures on a single page than most modern writers manage to squeeze into a chapter, or an entire book.

Marek Kohn, author
Mason & Dixon, by Thomas Pynchon. ‘”The mists rise up out of the Bog. There she is, full, spherickal ... the last time I shall see her as a Material Being ... when next appearing, she will have resum'd her Deity.” Maskelyne will edit this out, which is why Mason leaves it in his Field Report.’ Thus Pynchon imagines the eighteenth-century astronomer Charles Mason observing a Transit of Venus: subtle phrasing, prose that sustains lasting pleasure, mischief, irony and wit; powerfully imparting a sense of science in a world still haunted and occult, and reminding the reader of all that is absent from conventional science writing.

Tim Lott, author
My favourite science book is The Blank Slate by Stephen Pinker. It really opened my eyes to a huge number of ways in the way the general public and the media misperceive the nature of human nature, out of a misplaced need for control over the human personality. Pinker's remarkable book re-establishes inborn human nature as being at the heart of the personality, and does it without in any way handing the baton over to determinism, or ignoring the importance of environmental factors. I have read and re-read this book, and it has changed the way I think not only about the human mind, but how society allows it wishes to impinge on its ability to judge matters of science on the evidence available. A brave, groundbreaking victory for both common sense and free speech, The Blank Slate forces us to look at many of the deepest assumptions that our society holds and makes us start to radically revise them.

Mark Miodownik, lecturer in Mechanical Engineering, King’s College London submitted a list that included The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
My main problem, I have come to realise, is that I read The Selfish Gene and Day of the Triffids too early and so became both paranoid and solipsistic at far too tender an age. While other children were laughing heartily at Terry Pratchett's bonkers prose or smiling tenderly at A Wrinkle in Time, I was pondering the implications of A Brief History of Time and trying to understand why the publishers ever went ahead with it. When I finally got round to reading the The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I was a shocked and serious teenager, and I found the book so much funnier and cleverer than any other book I had read that I wore my dressing gown to school for a week, and would frequently burst into hysterical laughter at the mere mention of the word 'petunia'.

Toby Murcott, science writer
My book would be Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman. Richard Feynman gives the best insight into genius that I have ever read. He constantly baffles and amazes people by doing the obvious. His particular genius is to see the world with childlike eyes, ignore his beliefs and prejudices and just take problems at face value.

Vivienne Parry, writer and broadcaster
My favourite science book by a mile is The Voyage of the Beagle. It sits by my bed and I often dip into it. In fact I've just had to replace it for the 3rd time as it has been loved to death and fallen apart. It's a book written by an enthusiast who noted everything around him, plants, animals, rocks and people. It works as a terrific travel book, as a riveting insight into the scientific journey of one of the world's great scientists and as a great read. What more could you want?

Steven Pinker, Professor of Psychology, Havard University
Thomas Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, 1960. A masterpiece by a humane Dr. Strangelove, recent winner of the Nobel Prize in economics. This book introduced dozens of mind-blowing ideas on culture, emotion, conflict, cooperation, communication, and social life, whose full implications we are only beginning to explore. It is packed with wit and insight, and uses mathematical game theory judiciously. Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point and Robert Frank's Passions within Reason, both excellent bestsellers, were based on Schelling's ideas.

Matt Ridley, author
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. I still recall a sense of slight bewilderment when I read the newly published book as a first-term undergraduate at Oxford. Was this chap’s theory right or not? Until now my teachers had helpfully divided the world of science into right and wrong ideas. But here, I suddenly realised, I was going to have to make up my own mind. The handrails had gone. Dawkins’s sentences had such rhythm, his words had such precision and his thoughts had such order that his book was tasty literature as well as nourishing argument.

Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury
Oliver Sacks, A Leg to Stand On, 1984. Challenges all sorts of assumptions about mind and body, and sketches a very exciting concept of the body itself as ‘taking shape’ in mind and imagination.

Heinz Wolff, former Head of the European Manned Space Commission
My entry for the best science book ever is of course a very personal choice. The Microbe Hunters by Paul de Kruif, published first in 1926, did more to inspire me into science and medicine, than anything else I have read since. It has been republished quite frequently and can be bought readily in various formats from Amazon.

Dare you enter the haunted house?

2006-10-31T20:50:00.000+07:00

click the picture to play the spooky game!!!!!!

Do you believe in ghosts?

2006-10-31T20:49:00.000+07:00

Warning: this is very scary - make sure you are not alone and you have turned on your speakers - do not get too close to the computer screen - you must read all the stories carefully before you click to the next slide (Click here to proceed!!)

Female Scientists

2006-10-28T14:20:00.000+07:00

Know any girls who might be wondering what it’s like to study physics at uni? They can find out (for free) by signing up to Planet Jemma. Watch daily video diaries about Jemma’s life and receive regular emails written especially for you. Be inspired by very cool women scientists!

Today's lesson!

2006-10-20T08:09:00.000+07:00

Just because half term has started does not mean we cannot teach you! Here is a series of excellent mini lessons (with some questions to see how well you have understood). This lesson supports the year 10 chemistry topic C2 Classifying the Elements, but no matter what year you are in you should learn something from it. Note: turn on your speakers & flash player required. Look out for more lessons in the future or email me with topics that you need help with and I will try my best to find some lessons for you!

Click on the image below to load the lesson.

You simply have to applaud creativity........

2006-10-11T13:51:00.000+07:00

"A short video me and friend just finished for thefirstpost.co.uk . It took about 2 weeks to plan and animate and was made entirely with a digital stills camera."

Rocket Physics - don't try this at home!

2006-10-11T13:07:00.000+07:00

Help find the world's worst sound..........

2006-10-08T09:34:00.000+07:00

Play with a DNA copying machine

2006-10-05T17:10:00.000+07:00

PCR is a method by which a few fragments of DNA can be duplicated into millions in a couple of hours. This makes PCR a very useful method in forensic science, as it means that very small amounts of DNA could be enough to identify a person. PCR was invented by Kary Mullis, one of two Nobel Laureates in Chemistry in 1993. If you play the game below, you will be able to learn more about PCR. Also, a must for HL Biology and Chemistry students is the 30 min lecture by Roger D. Kornberg, the winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his studies of the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription.

Click here to play the DNA game

Click here for the lecture (real player required)

Click here for an interview with Roger D. Kornberg after he won the prize

Click here visit the Nobel Prize home page to see who won the other awards

CLick here to play some other games related to the Nobel Prizes

So pigs can fly - here's the evidence!!

2006-10-03T21:25:00.000+07:00

Watch this amazing dragon follow your eyes

2006-10-03T21:21:00.000+07:00

Results for the snack card challenge will be posted shortly. Meanwhile enjoy this strange dragon optical illusion. Whatever next? Flying pigs?

This obeys the laws of Physics, but still unbelievable!

2006-09-27T12:33:00.000+07:00

Ok - when was the last snack card challenge? Too long ago I hear you say. Well this one is a little more challenging than most. Can you calculate the velocity this Japanese guy needs to cover the 6.30m to break the world record? (hint: time of flight). Post your answers below (first name and tutor group). Correct answer wins a 100B snack card.

Only Matrix style Ping Pong can break all the laws of physics...........

2006-09-26T23:23:00.000+07:00

Sylvester and Tweety

2006-09-25T21:23:00.000+07:00

Watch this until Sylvester catches Tweety... wait for it, it's worth it.
After Tweety is caught, scroll down.

That was an idiot test. How long did you watch?
0-2 sec - There's hope for you.
2-5 sec - Having a bad day?
5-10 sec - Are you maybe just a slow reader?
10-20 sec - Should you be at this school?
20 - 30 sec - It is recommended that you don't have children.
30 sec - 1 min - You are somewhat low down in the food chain.
1 - 2 min - The equivalent of the average house plant.
2 - 5 min - Good afternoon Jessica Simpson.
5 min -1 hr - Dead people score in this range.
1hr plus - Congratulations. You have a negative IQ.

Sorry ;)

More optical illusions!

2006-09-23T09:12:00.000+07:00

How far can you swing?

2006-09-17T23:41:00.000+07:00

WARNING: this game is highly addictive! No school so try this challenge - see if you can beat 453m (my top distance) - post yours as a comment below!

Optical illusion

2006-09-17T23:10:00.000+07:00

This is powerful .................

2006-09-17T22:11:00.000+07:00

click play in the bottom left of the slide (turn on your speakers)

How much weight can a bridge take?

2006-09-14T10:18:00.000+07:00

Year 10 students find out in their Physics classes.

Could you complete the observations?

2006-09-13T10:26:00.000+07:00

How far would an air particle travel in a soap bubble in 1 second?

2006-09-10T21:45:00.000+07:00

Imagine the air in a small soap bubble, about the size of the tip of your little finger. All those little molecules dashing about bumping into each other.

Watch the bubble for one second. Each molecule does a crazy zig-zag journey, colliding with other molecules and bouncing off the sides of the bubble. Suppose that you could measure the length of each of these journeys, and add them up. What do you think they would come to?

What is the total distance travelled by the air molecules inside a small bubble in one second? A hundred metres? A hundred kilometres? A thousand kilometres?

The actual answer is...one million light-years!
You don’t believe me? Read on...

To work out the total distance, we need to multiply the average speed of the air molecules by the number of molecules inside the bubble.

Physics textbooks tell us that the average speed is roughly 500 metres per second.

To work out how many molecules are in the bubble, start with the fact that one mole of a perfect gas occupies 22,400 cubic centimetres at everyday temperature and pressure.

Our bubble contains about one cubic centimetre of air, so there are 1/22,400 moles of gas in there.

Now one mole of anything contains 6 x 10^23 molecules (Avogadro’s number).

So the number of molecules in the bubble is 6 x 10^23 divided by 22,400, which comes to about 2.5 x 10^19 molecules.

And if each molecule travels 500 metres in one second, the total distance travelled is about 10^22 metres.

As a light year is about 10^16 metres, this means that the total distance travelled in one second by the molecules in the bubble is 10^6 (a million) light years.

What this result brings home is not the speed of the molecules – Concorde flew faster – but just how many of the little blighters there really are.

Observing Skills: Magnifying onion cells to see internal structures

2006-09-08T15:00:00.000+07:00

Can you do this?

2006-09-08T13:53:00.000+07:00

Observing skills: what are the short and long term effects of acid rain?

2006-09-06T10:48:00.000+07:00

Who would have thought sand would behave like this?

2006-09-03T16:25:00.000+07:00

What happens when you add mentos to coke?

2006-08-31T09:09:00.000+07:00

Are these forces balanced in a year 8 tug-of-war?

2006-08-30T09:13:00.000+07:00

Bioscience Photography Competition and 3D photos

2006-07-30T23:03:00.000+07:00

The Centre for Bioscience at The Higher Education Academy, University of Leeds, are launching a photographic competition on the theme of 'Bioscience in Action' where they are asking for entries from non-professional photographers on any angle of bioscience, including teaching it. The prizes are £500, £200 and £100 for first, second and third winners. There’s a few rules and regs, those and the entry forms etc. are all on their webpage here.

Imagine if instead of looking at photographs, you could walk through them. How amazing would that be? That's what a new computer programme may enable people to be able to do, and it could be ready in 2006.

The software firm Microsoft has come up with a way of matching up different images of a particular subject and then collecting them together in one virtual 3D model. A computer user could then walk or fly through the scene to look at any of the pics from any angle. Wow!

The technology is expected to be available online. People could upload their photos to a website, and then combined with other images, could produce a 3D model. The technology, called Photosynth, could also be used in tourism, with visitors able to take a virtual tour of some kind to see if they like the look of a place before they go. Right let’s have a look at the latest rides at Alton Towers.

It sounds a bit like the Magic Eye pictures that were so popular in the 1990’s. These were also known as 3D stereograms. People used to stare blankly at an image of coloured dots and swirly things, crossing and uncrossing their eyes, saying “I think I can see it – is it a goat on a skateboard?” Actually no, it’s supposed to be someone’s corporate logo. So you see the problem, not everyone can do it. Also you need vision in both eyes to do it. So no chance for Nelson then or poor old King Harold.

The grandfather of 3D art and stereographical headache is Charles Wheatstone. In 1833 he accidentally discovered that because human eyes are set a short distance apart, images viewed through one eye differ slightly from the other. This creates an illusion of depth. Five years later, he invented the stereoscope. This is a binocular device through which a pair of monocular images are projected to both eyes. The optic axes converge at the same angle, thus giving the impression of a solid 3D image. Say that again in English. No on second thoughts don’t bother. Basically the brain can be fooled into thinking it’s seeing something it’s not. Optical illusions eh?

Test your logic - can you think outside the box?

2006-07-30T22:48:00.000+07:00

Remember - you are only allowed 1 minute!
Scroll down for the answers
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How well did you score? Comments welcome!

Have you ever wondered how those vending machines worked?

2006-07-30T22:40:00.000+07:00

What is this pic?

2006-07-06T17:08:00.000+07:00

Hints:
•I was discovered in 1976
•I was the subject of a 2000 movie starring Gary Sinise
•I was once believed to be evidence of alien life

Answer:
The original Mars face caused a sensation when images of a face-like hill produced by Viking 1 in 1976 were published across the world. The face, along with nearby pyramid-like structures, was believed by some to be an artificial structure constructed by alien life as a message to Earth. It was made the subject of a movie; Mission to Mars in 2000. The structure is a flat-topped hill, called a mesa, in which different rock types have eroded at different rates to produce the features of the face. Nice try with Keith Richards!

The world's smallest football pitch!

2006-07-06T17:01:00.000+07:00

A German scientist has used nanotechnology to create what he believes is the world's smallest soccer pitch.

Dr Stefan Trellenkamp, from the University of Kaiserslautern, made the pitch by using an electron beam to engrave lines onto a tiny piece of acrylic glass.

The pitch measures 380 by 500 nanometres and can only be seen through an electron microscope.

"I am really, really proud," the nanotechnology researcher says.

"The only problem is that I really don't know what to do with it. I can't put it on show as no one can see it," he says. "I guess it'll just stay in my drawer for the time being."

Trellenkamp says it took him a whole day to etch the pitch, which is so small that 20,000 of them could fit onto the tip of a human hair.

What have the world cup and year 12 scientists got in common? click the photo to find out!

2006-07-05T12:38:00.000+07:00

The relative size of our Earth and Sun

2006-07-01T11:09:00.000+07:00

Strange optical illusions

2006-06-27T22:59:00.000+07:00

Concentrate on the cross in the middle, after a while you will notice that this moving purple dot will turn green! Look at the cross a bit longer and you‘ll notice that all dots except the green one will disappear. More mind bending illusions can be found on this powerpoint (right click, file save as) and this website. Enjoy!

2006-06-27T19:30:00.000+07:00

Ever wondered who was bigger – King Kong or Godzilla? Well, you’re still not really going to find out, but it's one of 20 interesting questions you'll find about your senses on the BBC website’s Senses Challenge. Have a go, see what you think…and find out what goes with white chocolate, broccoli, caviar or bacon? Eww, just the chocolate please. I got 12/20 - post a comment about how many you got!

How round is your planet?

2006-06-25T23:03:00.000+07:00

When is a planet not a planet? That is the question. At least according to the International Astronomical Union (IAU). For the first time, the organisation will be officially defining the word "planet", and it is causing much debate in the world of astronomy. There is only one thing that everyone seems to agree on: there are no longer nine planets in the Solar System.
The whole debate was sparked off by the discovery in January of last year of a potential 10th planet, temporarily named 2003 UB313, which is bigger than Pluto.
Pluto is already an unusual planet. It is made predominantly of ice, and is smaller even than the Earth's Moon.
In 1992, scientists at the University of Hawaii discovered a new collection of objects beyond Neptune called the Kuiper Belt. Some suggest Pluto should no longer be considered a planet, but a Kuiper Belt Object. One researcher has come up with a clear planetary definition he would like to see the IAU adopt. In a nutshell – is it round?
This definition could lead to a Solar System with as many as 20 planets, including Pluto, 2003 UB313, and many objects previously classified as moons or asteroids.
New categories of planet could be introduced. Mercury, Venus, the Earth and Mars would be "rocky planets". The gas-giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune would be a second category. Pluto, 2003 UB313, and any other objects passing the "roundness test", would be reclassified as a third type of planet - perhaps "icy dwarfs". Whatever the final outcome, by September there will no longer be nine planets in the Solar System. What? What about My Very Easy Method Just Shows Us Nine Planets? How are we supposed to write a rhyme to remember twenty or so planets? There’s no respect…
For more information check out the BBC News website
Pluto - NASA

Super massive black hole at the centre of our galaxy

2006-06-22T20:16:00.000+07:00

Listen Now - 17062006
Download Audio - 17062006

How do you prove that something is there when it can't be seen? Although for
decades the existence of a super massive black hole at the centre of our galaxy
was viewed with scepticism by many astronomers, a team at the University of
California, Los Angeles did the maths to prove it and have taken spectacular
pictures of the galactic centre.

Transcript

You wouldn't think they'd miss a lump the size of a zillion suns lurking down
there in the middle of the galaxy, would you! But it was surprisingly hard to
locate. Professor Andrea Ghez of the University of California, Los Angeles, led
a team who brought it off.

Andrea Ghez: The idea of super massive black holes, black holes that
have a mass of maybe a million to a billion times the mass of our sun wasn't
predicted theoretically, unlike the little black holes that were first thought
of theoretically and then demonstrated observationally. So people didn't believe
that these things could exist, they had no idea how they would form, so why
would there be one at the centre of our galaxy?

Robyn Williams: So how was the argument turned around?

Andrea Ghez: The argument was turned around by doing the experiment to
look for a super massive black hole, and the way we did this was using
principles from freshman physics, measure the masses of a thing by watching how
something orbits around it, just like planets orbiting the sun; you can weigh
the mass of the sun and figure out how small it is. You can actually weigh a
black hole at the centre of our galaxy by watching how stars orbit the centre of
the galaxy. This way you prove that there's a lot of mass inside a very tiny
volume, and that's the proof of a black hole.

Robyn Williams: I suppose, it being black, you can't actually take a
picture of it, can you?

Andrea Ghez: We've seen the plasma around it, and this is a material
that's very hot because it's falling into the black hole, so in that sense you
do have another signature of a black hole by looking at things being heated by,
again, it's the gravity heating things up locally. But from that you can't prove
that it's a black hole but you can look at its dining habits.

Robyn Williams: What it's about it eat. Remind us what a plasma
is.

Andrea Ghez: A plasma is a very hot set of electrons and protons that
are separated from each other, whizzing around.

Robyn Williams: So it's the ingredients of an atom that's not in a
kind of atomic structure, as such, it's just the mash.

Andrea Ghez: Right. Plasma is a gas that's so hot that the electrons
can't stay bound, so they separate out and the atoms aren't whole, you just see
the electrons and the protons and neutrons.

Robyn Williams: So how far away is this plasma soup from the black
hole itself?

Andrea Ghez: The plasma soup is quite close to the black hole. It
extends roughly the size of our solar system. I guess it's a good size to think
of in thinking about the plasma.

Robyn Williams: Well, I would have thought that close enough to be
swallowed ages ago.

Andrea Ghez: It is getting eaten up but it's continually
replenished.

Robyn Williams: How?

Andrea Ghez: From stars that lose their outer shells, that stuff that
falls in towards the centre of the galaxy gets heated up by the black hole and
that's the plasma that you see today.

Robyn Williams: So you're suggesting, in some ways, that the black
hole is characterised by a kind of halo effect of this plasma, and this is what
you might expect to find in other galaxies as well?

Andrea Ghez: Absolutely. Whatever we see in our own galaxy, you expect
to see in other galaxies. Our galaxies are completely garden variety, ordinary
galaxies, so whatever is here must exist in many other galaxies.

Robyn Williams: Why so prosaic? Why can't ours be unique?

Andrea Ghez: Whenever astronomers think that we are unique, we get
ourselves into trouble. I think the general argument is we're probably pretty
typical; our sun is pretty typical and our galaxy is quite common. We see things
that look like our galaxy in outer space.

Robyn Williams: Give me an idea of the ways in which that black hole
may have grown. Was it there more or less in the beginning of the formation of
the galaxy, and has it got bigger? What else has happened to it?

Andrea Ghez: There was a large debate just a few years ago; which came
first, the galaxy or the black hole? And today we actually recognise that they
had to form together. We've recognised that there's a connection between the
size of the black hole and the size of the central part of the galaxy, and the
only way that that could exist, that connection, is if they were formed
together. So they came together and they grew together. Black holes get bigger
by swallowing material around it, so they grow throughout their life, and our
galaxy's also growing throughout its life.

Robyn Williams: Is there a limit, like there is in stars, to that sort
of growth? In fact, I think there is a formal limit to the size of stars,
indeed. And is there a point at which a black hole cannot grow anymore?

Andrea Ghez: That's a good question and people are actually posing
that question today, and we don't have evidence but there's certainly theories
that there may be ways in which black holes regulate how large they get, but we
don't know the answer today.

Robyn Williams: We may have many black holes kind of budding off.

Andrea Ghez: Maybe. Or maybe they get so big that they keep things
from falling onto it. In other words, when they get big, they go on a diet.

Robyn Williams: So they repel stuff. I see.

Andrea Ghez: That's one idea. We don't know for sure.

Robyn Williams: What was the paper you published in December?

Andrea Ghez: We published a paper on the first view of the centre of
our galaxy using something called laser guide star adaptive optics. It's new
technology that has allowed us to get the most pristine view of the centre of
the galaxy that we've ever had before.

Robyn Williams: So you can actually, in other words, picture it?

Andrea Ghez: We can picture it. We can make the prettiest picture
you've ever seen. We've had the telescope experience Lasik surgery, so the
pictures that we're obtaining today are much clearer than what we could see
before which allows us to see much more detail than what we could see
before.

Robyn Williams: What's it like?

Andrea Ghez: What we see at the centre of the galaxy with these
pictures taken with infrared light, which is just long ward of what your eye
detects, we see light from stars, we see light from the dust that's there, so we
can tell that's it's a fairly hot environment. The pictures that we take, we
take every year, so what we actually see is the stars moving and we see them
moving at incredibly high speeds, which allows us to first discover the black
hole and then to explore whether or not there's any extended halo of dark matter
surrounding the central black hole. There may be an entourage of mini black
holes. That's what we're looking for today.

Robyn Williams: That dark matter is not itself black hole.

Andrea Ghez: Right. So that maybe there's an extended contribution of
dark matter around the black hole itself.

Robyn Williams: Where might people see this picture? Have you put it
on the web or anything like that?

Andrea Ghez: We have a website. If you got to
www.astro.ucla.edu/research/galcenter you'll find our pictures there.

Robyn Williams: That's astro.ucla.edu/research/galcenter to look at
the centre of the Milky Way. Andrea Ghez is professor of physics and astronomy
at the University of California, Los Angeles. And I have no doubt she was a
formidably clever young girl at school.

Guests

Prof Andrea Ghez
Department of Physics & Astronomy
University of California Los Angeles
http://astro.ucla.edu/~ghez/

Further Information

UCLA Galactic Center Group

What is this photo?

2006-06-19T13:06:00.000+07:00

SNACK CARD CHALLENGE!! When was the last time we had a snack card challenge? So long ago I can't remember. If you can tell me what is going on in this photo and where it came from then a 100 baht snack card (not one of the dodgy year 9 ones!) could be yours. Add a comment to this post (first name and tutor group only). Here are some clues to help:

• I am microscopic in size
• I am part of an amphibious animal
• I am undergoing an essential life process

Ps Students only!!!!!!!