Stone Age to Life for Primary-School Pupils
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Winter 2012 Issue 25 How many schools and teachers do you reach – The European journal for science teachers worldwide? In this issue: Accelerating the pace of science: interview with CERN‘s Rolf Heuer Also: Science in the open: bringing the Stone Age to life for primary-school pupils Advertising in Science in School · Choose between advertising in the quarterly print journal or on our website. · Website: reach over 30 000 science educators worldwide – every month. · In print: target over 5000 European science educators every quarter, including over 3500 named subscribers. · Distribute your flyers, brochures, CD-ROMs or other materials to the recipients of the print copies. For more details, see www.scienceinschool.org/advertising LIKE US ON FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/scienceinschool Published by EIROforum: ISSN: 1818-0353 Subscribe (free in Europe): www.scienceinschool.org Published and funded by EIROforum Editorial About Science in School The European journal for science teachers Science in School is the only teaching journal to cover all sciences and target the whole of his print copy of Science in School has a mass Europe and beyond. Contents include cutting- of nearly a quarter of a kilogram. But do you edge science, teaching materials and much more. know how a kilogram is defined? And did you know that the definition may be about to Brought to you by Europe’s top scientific research institutes Tchange, with the help of CERN (page 59)? Does this Science in School is published and funded by have anything to do with the Higgs, you might ask? It EIROforum (www.eiroforum.org), a partnership doesn’t, in fact, but we’re proud to have CERN’s direc- between eight of Europe’s largest intergovern- tor general, Rolf Heuer, share his excitement about the mental scientific research organisations. Higgs boson (page 6). Inspiring science teachers worldwide The discovery of this new boson is certainly a historic moment in physics, The Science in School website offers articles perhaps comparable to Galileo Galilei’s discovery of Jupiter’s moons in the in 30+ languages and is read worldwide. The free quarterly journal is printed in English and th 17 century. Now you and your students can follow in his footsteps, re-dis- distributed across Europe. covering the motions of these celestial bodies (page 41). If you’re a chemistry teacher, however, you may be more interested in how another cornerstone of Advertising: tailored to your needs science, the periodic table, is still under development, with scientists striving Choose between advertising in our print to create the next heaviest element (page 18). journal, or on our website. For maximum And during your stroll through history, you could step all the way back into impact, reach our entire readership with an advertorial (online and in print). Online and in the Stone Age with your pupils, with an outdoor project for primary school print, we have a total of 100 000 readers per (page 48). As far as we know, people in the Stone Age didn’t have soap, but quarter. the Babylonians, 5000 years ago, did. Today, scientists are adapting this old in- · The majority of our readers are secondary- vention by making magnetic surfactants (page 22), which could, for example, school science teachers. be used to clean up oil spills before they spread through the ocean, following · Our readership also includes many primary- the currents. school teachers, teacher trainers, head teachers and others involved in science Ocean currents and waves are a complex and exciting topic, although they education. aren’t always addressed outside geography lessons. With the help of some · The journal reaches significant numbers simple activities, however, your students can explore the physics of the ocean of key decision-makers: at the European for themselves (page 28). Commission, the European Parliament and in Out on the open seas, fishermen need to pay careful attention to currents as European national ministries. they search for fish. On a microscopic scale, scientists at EMBL are also con- For more information, see www.scienceinschool.org/advertising or cerned with fishing – the way that microtubules ‘fish’ the chromosomes apart contact [email protected] during cell division. It turns out that the process is rather inaccurate, which is one cause of infertility (see page 13). Subscribing Bringing cutting-edge science such as this into the classroom can be a power- Register free online to: ful motivating factor for your students – and of course it’s part of the purpose · Subscribe to the e-newsletter of Science in School. To help you do this, we’ve got some ideas on how to · Request a free print subscription introduce and analyse research papers with your students (page 36). Alterna- (limited availability) tively, you could use some of our simply written but informative science arti- · Post your comments. cles; for example, you could introduce your students to the science involved How can I get involved? in orthodontics (page 54) or to the mystery of altruism (online only). Science in School relies on the involvement of Science in School, of course, relies on the altruism of many of its readers, so teachers, scientists and other experts in science why not get more involved? You could translate articles so that we can share education. · Submit articles or reviews them with other teachers in your country; review articles to ensure they are up · Join the referee panel to standard; review websites and other materials; or submit your own articles. · Translate articles for publication online And of course, you can spread the word about Science in School, for example · Tell your colleagues about Science in School by ‘liking’ our Facebook page. · Make a donation to support the journal. See www.scienceinschool.org or contact us. We wish you a cosy wintertime and look forward to seeing you in 2013! Contact us Marlene Rau Dr Eleanor Hayes / Dr Marlene Rau Editor of Science in School Science in School [email protected] European Molecular Biology Laboratory www.scienceinschool.org To learn how to Meyerhofstrasse 1 use this code, see 69117 Heidelberg page 65. Germany i I Science in School I Issue 25 : Winter 2012 www.scienceinschool.org Contents Image courtesy of CERN i Editorial News from the EIROs 2 Cool and hot science for a bright future Feature article 6 Accelerating the pace of science: interview with 6 CERN’s Rolf Heuer Image courtesy of schoeband; image source: Flickr Cutting-edge science 13 Sloppy fishing: why meiosis goes wrong 18 The numbers game: extending the periodic table 22 Magnetic science: developing a new surfactant Teaching activities 28 Movers and shakers: physics in the oceans 22 36 Exploring scientific research articles in the classroom Image courtesy of somebody_; image source: Flickr Science education projects 41 Galileo and the moons of Jupiter: exploring the night sky of 1610 48 Science in the open: bringing the Stone Age to life for primary-school pupils Science topics 28 54 The changing face of orthodontics 59 Weighing up the evidence: what is a kilo? Image courtesy of Ramessos; image source: Wikimedia Commons Additional online material Science and Society The mystery of altruism 48 Image courtesy of lanuiop; image source: Flickr Forthcoming events for schools: www.scienceinschool.org/events To read the whole issue, see: www.scienceinschool.org/2012/issue25 54 To learn how to use this code, see page 65. www.scienceinschool.org Science in School I Issue 25 : Winter 2012 I 1 Cool and hot science for a bright future Science in School is published by EIROforum, a collaboration between eight of Europe’s largest inter-governmental scientific research organisations. This article reviews some of the latest news from the EIROforum members (EIROs). CERN: proudly EFDA-JET: paving presenting the new (Higgs?) the tungsten-tile road to ITER boson ITER, the world’s biggest fusion experiment, is under construction in the south of France. During its construction, On 4 July 2012, the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the Joint European Torus (JET) – currently Europe’s largest CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) announced the dis- fusion experiment – is a vital test bed for ITER design and covery of a new particle with a mass of about 126 GeV and operation. characteristics similar to those expected for the long-sought Higgs boson. This discovery is a major step forward in our In this capacity, JET has successfully completed its 2011-2012 understanding of the origin of mass, and of the fundamental experimental campaign by running 151 identical high-powered properties of matter, space and time. plasma pulses, totalling 900 seconds of stable operating time. This emulates a single pulse of ITER – by virtue of its supercon- The preliminary results come from data taken in 2011 and ducting magnets, ITER will be able to maintain a stable pulse 2012, corresponding to about 1015 proton-proton collisions at 20 times longer than JET. On the basis of the recent experi- 7 and 8 TeV energy. More data will be needed to study the ments, scientists are confident that they will be able to maintain different decay modes of the new particle, to find out if the stable fusion conditions for the length of these longer pulses. theoretical predictions are correct, or if there are any – even The experiment also tested the long-term behaviour of the wall tiny – differences between the predictions of the Higgs model materials – a range of JET’s wall tiles will now be extracted by and the observations. the remote-handling system (pictured) for analysis. Find out more about the search for the Higgs in this issue’s feature The ITER design team are very interested in the results, and article: have already requested an even more severe test for the materi- Hayes E (2012) Accelerating the pace of science: interview als when experiments recommence next year: deliberate melt- with CERN’s Rolf Heuer.