Chemistry Week

The Royal Society of Chemistry are promoting chemistry for one week from Friday 4th November. In support of this there are some interesting articles on the following topics:

• FOOD
• SPORT
• FASHION
• ENTERTAINMENT

Click on the links to see what all of them have to do with chemistry - you'll be surprised! If you are really bored there is a tile sliding game at this link! Happy sliding :)

An Excellent Book

This really is a good read that I would like to recommend.
It's written by three English children whose mother takes them from England to live in Botswanna. There they enjoy many adventures and play an important role in the study of Lions. 'Better than any novel' says the Guardian Newspaper.
ISBN 184255 220 1

No more smelly pants?

Seeing Ghosts!

You will need:

2 sheets of white paper
A red felt tip pen

What to do:

Draw a ghost in red on one of the sheets of paper and colour it in.
Stare at it for about 30 seconds… you’ll start to see a green outline around it when your eyes are ready.
Now look at the second, blank sheet of paper.
You should see a ghostly green image hovering on the paper!

What’s going on?

Eyes get tired like any other part of the body. When you look at a red image the cells in your eyes’ retinas respond to the colour, but after a while they get tired and stop functioning as well. White light is made up of all colours, so when you then look at a white sheet of paper not all the red light is picked up by your tired eyes and you are left with an after image of green.

Click here to download some ghost drawings you can colour in & trace.

An Edible Solar System

Here’s one we made earlier… but if you missed it here is your chance to get all space age in the kitchen. What could be nicer now it is getting wintry than a hot chocolate and a solar system biscuit!

You will need:

• 175g plain flour
• 100g butter or margarine
• 50g caster sugar
• Four different sized biscuit cutters
• Items to decorate – coloured icing, hundreds and thousands and liquorice

What to do:

• Pre-heat the oven to 150°C/300°F Gas 2 (get an adult to do this!)
• Cream the butter or margarine and caster sugar together until they are light and fluffy.
• Stir in the flour and, once mixed, knead the dough together until it forms a ball.
• Add a sprinkle of flour if the dough is sticky.
• Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface until it is about 5mm thick.
• Use the smallest biscuit cutter to cut three biscuits from the dough (Pluto, Mercury and Mars).
• Use the next-size-up biscuit cutter to make two biscuits (Venus and Earth).
• Use the next larger biscuit cutter to make another two biscuits (Neptune and Uranus).
• Use the largest biscuit cutter to cut the last two biscuits (Saturn and Jupiter).
• Place the biscuits on a baking tray and bake in the centre of the oven for 25 minutes or until golden brown.
• Let the biscuits cool before decorating.
• Keep track of the planets as you cut them out so you can decorate them correctly after they are cooked.

Now for the decoration:

• Mercury has a rocky surface and is orange-red in colour, so use coloured icing and hundreds and thousands to decorate this biscuit.
• Venus is covered with thick, yellow clouds so you will need yellow icing.
• Earth is an obvious one! Decorate with green and blue icing and a sprinkle of icing sugar to resemble the clouds.
• Decorate your Mars biscuit with red icing.
• Jupiter is a giant ball of yellow, orange and red gas arranged in stripes.
• Use stripes of coloured icing decorate with a red sweet in the middle to resemble Jupiter’s Great Red Spot.
• Saturn looks yellow because of its foggy atmosphere and is famous for its rings, so use yellow icing and lay a few pieces of liquorice on the biscuit to resemble its rings.
• Uranus looks green so decorate with green icing.
• Neptune is blue with faint stripes so decorate with blue icing and make faint stripes with sprinkles of icing sugar.
• Finally for Pluto, sprinkle a little icing sugar on the top of the biscuit to resemble this icy, rocky planet.

Now all you have to do is arrange the biscuits in the correct planetary order, and serve!

An important message from 8V!

Neon, Vanadium, Erbium, Ruthenium, Nitrogen, Indium, Lanthanum, Boron, Sulphur. A very important message they pose. If you think you know the answer - ask someone in 8V that knows!

Guest speaker Dr Azeez Abdul Hakeem

If you were not lucky enough to see and hear the talk given to us by Dr Azeez Abdul Hakeem on the environmental projects at the Banyon Tree in the Maldives then don't worry, you can hear his talk by clicking on the podcasts icon or simply click here. Many thanks for Dr Azeez for his time and to Miss Brown for organising the event.