Final AGENDA 061204 (1) Practical biofuel activities. The activities are provided to engage young people with the science and issues surrounding bioenergy and biofuels. The topics cover a range of areas in science and technology including: plant science, microbiology and chemistry. They are provided inline with our strategic priorities which include bioenergy and industrial biotechnology. Find the activity you are looking for from this content list: Introduction downloadsBiogasOil and biodieselBioethanolLignocellulosic bioethanolBacterial biofuelsAlgal biofuelsDry activitiesReference Who should download these activities? Researchers – To communicate and engage young people with the scientific principles and research in the fields of bioenergy and biofuels through practical activities.
Teachers – Many of the activities are suggested by exam boards to cover the knowledge, understanding or practical skills content required for GCSE, A-level or Higher examinations. What is in the practical guide? Feedback Biofuel kits Activities Biogas Oil and biodiesel. Microwave experiments at school. As reported in this issue of Science in School (Stanley, 2009), Israeli scientists have been using microwaves to drill holes into glass and ceramics, and to produce plasma balls. Microwave ovens are a useful resource for teachers as well as scientists. Here is a collection of fun microwave experiments that are suitable for the classroom. Plasma balls Materials A small heatproof glass bowl A short wooden splint or toothpick (3-5 cm long) A cork 50 ml laboratory beakers (or other similarly sized microwavable objects) Procedure Remove the turntable from the microwave and cover or remove the light.
The plasma usually forms in about 10 seconds. The only negative effect of the demonstration is a smoky smell in the microwave. Schrempp’s demonstration of this and lots of other dramatic experiments can be seen on the Exploscience websitew2. Cut a grape almost completely in half along its length, retaining a small piece of the skin on one side to keep the two halves connected. Soap sculpture References. Fishing for genes: DNA microarrays in the classroom. Fishing for genes one step at a time: a short story Once upon a time in a small village, there was a man. Every day he went to a pond to catch fish for his dinner. One day it would be a catfish, the next day an eel — sometimes it would be a different fish each day of the week. Then one day he wondered how many different species of fish there were in the pond, and how many of each species.
How could he find out? It was obvious that catching one fish at a time wouldn’t work — for all he knew the pond might contain thousands of fish. So he browsed the Internet for ideas and found a book listing 20 000 species of freshwater fish, with the bait used to catch them. Eventually, he thought of a complex but clever solution: he cast 20 000 fishing lines, each with an array of hooks, into the pond. [Note – this is a fictitious story: about 9000 species of freshwater fish are known today, and there is not a different bait for each one.] Microarray experiments can take a lot of time.
Materials Real. Microscale chemistry: experiments for schools. Working at this scale has many advantages. Using smaller amounts of reagent reduces the time, cost and waste involved, and encourages students to think about environmental protection. Although safety precautions are still necessary, the risk involved is lower with smaller volumes – and the students had no difficulties manipulating such small quantities. At this scale, the experiments do not need normal laboratory glassware but can be performed using simple household materials such as chewing-gum packets; these are cheap, can be reused several times and require little storage space.
Below are instructions for some microscale experiments that we perform with 14- to 15-year-old students. The reactions are part of the usual Greek education curriculum for this age of students, but would normally be studied on a larger scale. Experiments Safety notes: Preparation Hydrochloric acid solution (15% w/w) can be bought in the supermarket in some countries.
Experiment 1: Colour change of indicators Κ. Why there's only one honest objection to wind farms | Damian Carrington | Environment. Here's a little gem that exemplifies the fundamental dishonesty underlying all but one of the objections deployed against onshore wind farms. The Sunday Telegraph reported that "subsidies paid to windpower companies are forcing up to 50,000 households a year into fuel poverty, according to analysis of government figures by the House of Commons Library. " This statement is at best daft, as I will argue below. The analysis is believed to have been requested by Conservative MP Chris Heaton Harris, who led the 100 Tory MPs demanding big cuts in subsidies for wind farms. The House of Commons Library does not publish its work for MPs, but I now have a copy of the short analysis, which is reproduced in full at the end of this post so you can all admire its idiocy.
The essence of the calculation is as follows. Wind power subsidies - both onshore and offshore - cost energy bill payers about £10 a year, less than 1% of the average annual bill for gas and electricity. The world map of CO2 emissions | Environment. Science in School. Creating eclipses in the classroom.
During an eclipse, the Sun or the Moon seems to disappear. What is happening? Why not explore this fascinating phenomenon in the classroom, with an easy to build model? Solar and lunar eclipses are astronomical phenomena that have been shrouded in myth and legend throughout history. The ancient Chinese, for example, believed that solar eclipses occurred when a celestial dragon devoured the Sun. The Chinese word for an eclipse, ‘chih’, even means ‘to eat’. Because eclipses are frequent and can be observed without a telescope, they are an excellent topic for introducing astronomy at school. Lunar eclipses Although the Moon appears brightly in the night sky, it does not in fact shine but simply reflects the light from the Sun. Usually, when the Moon is on the far side of Earth from the Sun (figure 1B), the three bodies do not lie in a straight line; instead, the Moon is slightly above Earth and is still illuminated, so we see a full moon.
Solar eclipses Eclipses in the classroom Materials. Exploding chromosomes: how cancer begins. By Sonia Furtado Neves, EMBL Once most of the beads have been collected, a kind adult threads them onto a new cord, and the crisis is over. Unless, of course, the child won’t be satisfied with anything less than an exact replica of the original necklace: finding all the beads – including the ones that rolled under the sofa or behind the cupboard – and threading them back in the right order can be a tricky business. “When we got the DNA sequence data back, we saw a chaos in the girl’s genome that we couldn’t really explain at first,” says Tobias Rausch, from Jan’s research group, who led the data analysis.
“Then we saw a paper by another group, describing a newly discovered phenomenon they called chromothripsis, and it clicked,” adds fellow group member Adrian Stütz. “This makes us suspect that these three events are connected,” says Jan. “We believe that a TP53 mutation may cause chromosomes to explode, or possibly prevent the cell from reacting properly when they do. Reference Resources. On your bike: how muscles respond to exercise. We all know that exercise makes us fitter and healthier – but what changes take place in our cells to make this happen? Next time you are working out in the gym, or pounding the streets running or jogging, ponder this: the idea of ‘muscle memory’ – that today’s exercise has effects on our muscles years from now – has never been demonstrated scientifically.
Does it really exist, and if so, how does it work? These are some of the questions we hope to answer in our on-going research, which aims to pin down the changes that occur in muscles when we exercise, and how our muscles ‘know’ to respond differently to, say, endurance training as opposed to strength training. Helping us to investigate these questions is a large team of volunteers. Not only must they cycle to exhaustion in our gym, but before and after a strenuous exercise regime lasting several weeks, we take a tiny sample of their leg muscle under local anaesthetic (figure 1). Building mitochondria Epigenetic factors Acknowledgement. Title. Building a seismograph from scrap. By Panteleimon Bazanos Some earthquakes may be so slight as to be practically unnoticeable, but they can still be recorded.
Each tremor produces different types of vibration, or seismic waves, which travel through Earth’s interior with different velocities. These waves can be detected and recorded by instruments called seismographs, which are often sited at great distances from the earthquake. By measuring the time that the seismic waves take to arrive at seismographs, as well as recording the amplitude and duration of the waves, we can calculate the magnitude of the earthquake and determine its epicentre. Monitoring local earthquakes Earthquakes are a daily occurrence in Greece (figure 1), sitting as it does at the boundary of two tectonic plates. The district of Messinia, where our school is located, has a history of major earthquakes. Figure 1: Earthquakes in Greece during the first week of November 2011. Building a seismograph Figure 5: How a loudspeaker works.
Now it’s your turn Review. Cell Biology Animations. Chemistry. Delete Mitosis. Biology Educator. Biology KhanAcademy. Mitosis. Science.