Hip Hop Science Spaza and Ifani Team up for National Science Week 2014!
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issue 2, August 2014 Hip Hop Science Spaza and iFani team up for National Science Week 2014! Hands up students!! Who knows iFani?? BIG Hip Hop artist right? BUT did you know he is also a SCIENTIST? AND he is working with Science Spaza to kick off our Hip Hop Science Spaza programme. He is the Ish! In the last Spaza Space, we during National Science Week, so launched out Hip Hop Science stay glued to your TV sets! Spaza Competition where YOU You thought studying Science was are taking 4 science facts from one difficult, neh? But you need to of your Science Spaza resources experiment! iFani was also raised and turning those 4 facts into a in difficult circumstances, but RAP song, right? Now how dope he could see the poetry and the is that? science in things, just by observing With National Science Week just his surroundings… (and some around the corner (2-9 August hard work). So put some hard 2014), we have invited iFani to work in here, and lets get some work with learners in Durban RESULTS. We want your RAP to write RAP songs out of the entry by 30 September 2014. science facts they have been DOUBLE IT UP!! learning, and then to BATTLE it (Hip Hop Science Spaza out for the BEST rap song of the Competition deadline extended DAY! We will be going live with until AFTER National Science this workshop on Hectic Nine-9 Week – 30 September 2014!) Top TIPS: How to write a good rap song! Enter the Hip Hop Science Spaza competition Keep it simple! It must have rhythm, it must have a beat, it must rhyme! and stand a chance of having your track recorded Take 4 facts from ONE of your Science Spaza resources and work a rhyme around for the Hip Hop Science Spaza 2014 CD! those four facts. Get your teacher to check that your science facts are correct. Some tips from our American friends – Google: the Rap Genius Forum A selection of the best of the 2014 competition will be Content – Generally, what the artist(s) are saying in the song. Different minds professionally recorded and distributed to all registered like different kinds of content in songs. However, most good songs don’t have Science Spazas. Not only will you be learning science, you’ll also swearing. be teaching it to other science learners across South Africa. Lyrics – The actual words used to convey what is trying to be said in the song. Lyrics play the biggest role in determining if a song is good or not. Clever Rules of the Hip Hop Science Spaza Competition: wordplay and a nice rhyme scheme can make a song way better. In hip hop/rap, • Closing date: 30 September 2014. just about every good song is poetic in some way. • Rap songs must be based on a school textbook topic or Emotion – Emotion also plays a big part in how good a song is. People can feel a Science Spaza resource topic, e.g. Static Electricity. the emotion in songs like it is part of the beat. Expressing emotion, whether it Download all the resources for free and see the be anger, sadness, happiness, etc., can always make a song better. It is also how Rules and Conditions of this competition at people make personal connections to songs. www.sciencespaza.org. Beat – Not much needs to be said about this. Having a great beat can make a • No swearing, and be respectful of women. song with not-so-good lyrics worth listening to. • Submissions can be whatsapped to 076 1737 130 There are many more qualities that make a song good, but these are the main ones. or emailed to [email protected]. Jive Media Africa What time is it? Welcome to the second issue of Spaza Space celebrating National Science Week! National Science With events around the country we’ll be exploring the role that science plays in our Week time!!! lives… today and in the future. We’ve got lots in store! Mzansi’s There’s even a cool maths trick Oh yeah ... it’s that time of own award winning Rap artist and you can win prizes with the year again where we (and computer scientist) just the Mathemagic challenge! celebrate Science in the got behind the Hip Hop Science Find out about robots or dig world we live in. Spaza competition (watch into our crystals activity and Hectic Nine-9 on SABC 2 during discover why the whole world Sindi Buthelezi National Science Week) and you is celebrating the International can find out more about the Year of Crystallography! National Science Week (NSW) is Science Genius battles in New an initiative of the Department of As always you can also catch up York City on page 5. See what Science and Technology (DST) on news and pics from the clubs. GZA has to say about science that is celebrated annually across And remember, we want to hear and Hip Hop! And don’t delay – South Africa. It involves various science, Tomorrow’s world” and from you so tell us what you’re send us your entry! stakeholders and role players who the sub-themes are robotics, doing for science week – even if conduct fun science-based activities crystallography and Maths. You can find out more about a it’s just chilling with your friends during the week. The South African National Science Week 2014 runs career in computer science in and Spaza Space! Because Agency for Science and Technology from 2 to 9 August 2014, and it will another adventure with Agent knowledge is Ncah! Advancement (SAASTA) has be launched on the 2nd of August Zee. You can even meet a few been appointed by the DST as in Bloemfontein. The Science Spaza Team the implementing agency and computer scientists -then dive the national project manager for You can visit your nearest Science into some cool science stories National Science Week. Centre or turn to page 4 to see from the SAASTA Young Science what fun activities they will be Writers competition. NSW runs simultaneously in all doing this year. You will also get an nine provinces and in various opportunity to meet other kids who To find out more or to advertise in Spaza places per province. So if you are are fascinated by science and, who fascinated about Science of any Space contact [email protected] or call knows, together you might make Robert on 033 342 9382 kind, NSW 2014 is definitely for the world a better place. you. This year’s theme is “Today’s logical explanation: the very space and so how far away the apartment Cosmic Conundrum between galaxies is expanding, was. Supernovae work the same a relic from the Big Bang, the way, except the distances are much, Adapted from an article by Michelle Knights for the Young Science Communicators beginning of the Universe. The much greater. Competition detective took a bite and thought In 1998, two teams of astronomers a muffin starts off small, with all independently made measurements Smoke curled thickly around the dark room and around the the chocolate chips close together, but of distant supernovae. Both teams detective’s head. Brilliant stars shone out of the velvet sky and his in the oven it expands, driving the found something very strange. All eyes watched them, thinking, as a cigarette burned forgotten in his chocolate chips away from each other. the supernovae were farther away mouth. There was something wrong with the Universe and he was And so the chocolate chip Universe than they should be. The most had made perfect sense for most of going to find out what it was. All he knew was that they called it logical explanation is this: not only the 20th century. But all that had “dark energy”. is space itself expanding, but instead suddenly changed. of slowing down as we’d expect, it It all started with Einstein, who expanding or contracting but could The data was impossible, yet it is expanding faster and faster and could never have predicted the not be stationary. Einstein couldn’t was undeniable. The detective faster... intrigue that would surround what accept a non-static Universe so had seen the images himself, but So Einstein’s cosmological constant he called his “greatest blunder”. he fudged his equation, adding it still didn’t make any sense. It Einstein’s beautiful theory of what he called “the cosmological could be right after all, thought all had something to do with General Relativity, the world’s first constant”, which somehow exactly the detective. Only some kind of exploding stars. There are stars real explanation of gravity, implied balanced gravity and kept the weird anti-gravity could cause exploding in the Universe all the that the whole Universe could be Universe static. the expansion of the Universe to time: they run out of fuel, collapse accelerate. They call it “dark energy”. In the dark room under deepening and explode. But there’s a special night, the detective wondered what kind of these “supernovae” that is So what causes this accelerated it really meant for the Universe to a standard candle. The detective expansion? No-one knows. Even be static or otherwise. But Einstein glanced at the only lit window in though the leading scientists who realised the Universe couldn’t the apartment block across the made the discovery in 1998 have be static when Edwin Hubble street. If he knew what kind of received the Nobel Prize in Physics published his results showing that light bulb they were using, say a 60 for their discovery, still no-one every galaxy in the distant Universe watt bulb, then he could measure really has any idea what dark energy was moving away from us.