From the category archives:

General

Kid Questions: Why do Fingers Wrinkle?

February 20, 2012 Kid Questions

We’re swimming several times a week and the little girl is fascinated that she turns into a giant pink sultana. She has to check each finger and toe when we get out to see how wrinkly it is. So why do our fingers wrinkle? I grew up with the old explanation, but I did some [...]

They’re out there

February 13, 2012 Earth and Beyond

Image courtesy of Luciano Mendez, a hypothetical view of moons around a giant planet in the habitable zone. Exoplanets. And if we’ve already found over 700 with just few years of looking then how many billions really exist? It’s a crowded universe. Exoplanets are planets that orbit other stars. Most we have found so far [...]

Pendulum Waves

February 6, 2012 Energy and Change

First watch this video: How cool is that? And did you like the setup in the beginning when they showed you there were no tricks, it’s just a line of pendulums of different lengths. This, my friends, is all about maths. And physics, but at this level physics is pretty much applied maths. Pendulums Pendulums [...]

Bird Answers

February 3, 2012 General science

How did you do? I had good fun working out the answers. 1. Lungs in birds are very different to ours, they are more efficient. In mammals we breathe into large dead end sacks of alveoli, use some oxygen then have to get rid of the low oxygen air taking up the space. [...]

A reason to lose weight even though it’s really bad

January 30, 2012 Food

The One Million Kilo Challenge is not something I would normally be involved in, in fact I am going to give you a whole list of reasons why I think it’s a really bad idea. There’s even some science in there. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve done diets in the past. Both under a doctor’s supervision, [...]

The Social Media Users Who Could

December 28, 2011 Babies

I‘ve been umming and ahhing on whether to post this, because it doesn’t really fit with this blog. I know I do vaccine posts occasionally and it’s always a balancing act, but this isn’t really about vaccines at all. It’s about information, and if bloggers and social media users (ie you readers) don’t talk about [...]

Christmas Answers

December 23, 2011 General

A good way to finish posting before Christmas with a bit of Christmas trivia. 1. Reindeer are Rangifer tarandus. There are 8 or 9 subspecies, some of which are threatened or extinct, but as a species they are relatively numerous. Reindeer are the same animal as Caribou, just the European name. I never realised that. [...]

Kid Questions: Why do we see the lights after they are switched off?

December 5, 2011 Kid Questions

If you stare at a light for about 30 seconds then turn it off or look away you will still see a light in front of your eyes. This is called an afterimage, or technically a positive afterimage. In the back of your eyes are lots of little cells called cones. When certain types of [...]

Curiosity Found the Cat?

November 28, 2011 Earth and Beyond

NASA has successfully launched another mission to Mars with their biggest ever rover, Curiosity. Curiosity is the size of a car and the mission is the Mars Science Laboratory. Technically Curiosity is not searching for life, but it is assessing whether or not the Martian environment has been (or is?) suitable for life. The main [...]

Breaking Rules and Writing Science

November 22, 2011 General

Do you know the rules for blogging, or more broadly for internet culture, our new ADHD world? 3-500 words … don’t forget they’re reading on a phone … lots of images to drag them in … attention grabbing headline … controversy is good … but only if you want lots of one-off hits not long [...]