From the outside a raw egg and a hard boiled egg look the same, so how can you tell the difference? How can you tell if an egg is raw or hard boiled? The key is in the spin! A hard boiled egg will spin nicely and a raw egg will wobble. The raw egg…
Is taste linked to smell? Have you ever wondered why food doesn’t taste as good when you have a cold and blocked nose? When you eat, smell chemicals from the food travel up your nose, where they are detected by tiny nerve endings at the back of the nose. These nerves send a message to…
The Beaufort Scale was named after Sir Francis Beaufort ( a hydrographer with the Royal Navy ) and lists the effects of increasing wind speeds. The scale was initially designed to show the effects of the wind on a battleship at sea. When is a hurricane warning issued? Hurricane warnings are issued when winds reach…
You might have had an x-ray in hospital if you’ve hurt a bone or in the dentist when having a check up. X-rays are incredibly useful in medicine and have lots of other uses too. X-rays are used to view inside objects and materials. If you’ve been to an airport you’ve probably had your bag…
Pandas eat it, humans make stuff from it and it’s the fastest growing plant on Earth. Bamboo is pretty amazing, but why does bamboo grow so fast? Did you know bamboo can grow up to 1.2m a day?? Not all bamboo grows at that rate. There are over 1000 different species, adapted to different environments….
How much does the Earth weigh? We obviously can’t put the Earth on a gigantic scale so it needs a tricky calculation to work it out. Scientists calculate how strong the gravitational pull on other planets is to calculate weight. Heavier planets have a stronger gravitational pull. We talk about a planets mass rather than…
Have you ever wondered what shape a raindrop is or why a drop of water forms a sphere? Water droplets are spheres because surface tension pulls the molecules into the smallest possible area to give the lowest ratio of surface area to volume. This shape is a sphere. What shape is a raindrop? A falling…
The biggest living butterfly in the world is the Queen Alexandra’s Birdwing butterfly ( Orinthoptera alexandrae). It’s one of the rarest butterflies in the world and is only found in the rainforest of Papua New Guinea. The wingspan of the female Queen Alexandra birdwing is up to 28 centimetres! Queen Alexandra’s Birdwing butterfly was named…
Do you know how salt melts snow? Grit is often sprayed on roads to stop cars from skidding on very cold days. What we call grit is a mixture of salt, gravel and stone. When snow falls on a road with grit applied, it mixes with the salt, lowering the snow’s freezing point and stopping…
A leap year has 366 days instead of the usual 365 days. We refer to a year as being a leap year when February has an extra day. February 29th is often called a leap day. Why do we have leap years? It’s all to do with the Julian or Gregorian calendar ( which has…
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