Category Archives: News

News

Katherine Johnson – an inspiring mathematician who inadvertently challenged our views of gender and race

I was very sorry to hear of the passing of Katherine Johnson, yesterday.  She was a female, African-American mathematician who worked for NASA and was an integral member of the team there in the 1950s and 1960s, when the first American astronauts went into space.  She calculated rocket trajectories and the orbit of the Earth for Nasa’s early space missions.  Her calculations were vital for ensuring these astronauts were able to return to Earth.

For more information, here are a few links you may like to explore.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2gCsxUGkNs   Biopic about Katherine Johnson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EiZe6WONWY   Hidden Figures – 3 African-American women who worked at NASA

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-51619848

INSECTS – Yummy!!

News

 

Roasted grasshoppers on spinach and avocado. © Chad Zuber

Is there something simple that you could do to help look after the future of our planet?  There are lots of things that you do already, such as ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’, but have you thought about eating insects?  This could make a big impact too!

Entomophagy is the eating of insects, which is something that we’ve done for thousands of years, if not from the time of the first hominid.  Why are they not very popular in British diets?  Over 2 billion people around the world eat them regularly!

Insects are rich in vitamins and minerals, as well as essential fatty acids like Omega-3.  Some of them are also low in fat and are a good source of protein.

Farming for meat, particularly beef, uses about one third of our available land, including land used to produce the food that livestock eat, and has resulted in water shortages and deforestation, as well as creating about one fifth of our greenhouse gas emissions.  Farming edible insects uses smaller amounts of land, water and feed and produces far fewer greenhouse gases.

Why not give it a try?

Look at the links below, if you want to find out more, including some delicious recipe ideas!

http://www.bugsfeed.com/are_insects_better_than_meat

Bugsfeed website – read it for recipe ideas, links to other sites focusing on insects and more detailed information about the nutritional values of various insects

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/eat-insects-save-the-world.html?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIlcisiujk5wIVTLDtCh0cyQ00EAAYASAAEgKPZfD_BwE 

Natural History Museum website

BBC Two – Tomorrow’s Food – This series is currently available on BBCiPlayer

Hydrogen power may be a ‘powerful’ solution for reducing our impact on global warming

News
picture from Berkeley Lab News Centre

Hydrogen has been called the ‘energy source of the future’.   It is very versatile and can be used as a clean source of energy for electricity, heating, transport and industry.   As a source of energy, It is fantastic in that it produces no carbon dioxide (CO2) when burnt for energy – only water and heat!   When I first discovered this, I was awe-struck.

What are we waiting for?  Well, actually, nothing.  A lot of research is being done at the moment into converting the natural gas supply to our appliances, for example our cookers and boilers at home, into a gas supply of hydrogen mixed with natural gas.  Eventually, hydrogen-only appliances could be the requirement for new equipment sold to us.

If you are looking at ways to help reduce your impact on global warming and your ‘carbon footprint’, let us know!  Write a comment responding to this post.  Give us some ‘handy hints’ and ideas!

To find out more about this topic, there are a couple of links, below.

https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/energy/hydrogen-fuel-future.htm

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jan/20/hydrogen-cars-hugo-spowers-future   

Iron – is it plant, animal or mineral?

photo by 123RF

Well, it’s a mineral, of course, but what I find amazing is that it is the same material whether it’s found in rocks, plants or animals!  From it, we can make tables, lamp posts and even skyscrapers, but it’s also the substance running around our bodies, helping our blood to collect molecules of oxygen so that we can live.  It’s the same nutrient in spinach (which always helped Popeye to grow bulging muscles!) as in seafood, meat, dried fruit and lentils, helping us to be more energetic and even better athletes!

photo by GeoFossils

When we were discussing a variety of rocks, including metal ores, in Year 3, the wide ranging properties of iron made us stop and think.  Can it really be possible that one mineral can be so versatile, used in such a wide variety of ways?  The answer is, ‘Yes!’  However, it is important to strike the correct balance of iron in our system.  Too much iron as an adolescent has been linked to depression and in adults, linked to dementia.  Too little iron can lead to anemia in children and adults, which means feeling fatigue and lower energy.

Good sources of iron, as mentioned in ‘Medical News Today’:

  • liver
  • lean red meat
  • chicken
  • seafood, including oysters
  • lentils and beans
  • tofu
  • fortified breakfast cereals
  • dried fruits, such as prunes, figs, and apricots
  • nuts
  • seeds
  • eggs
  • soya
  • molasses

Dark-green leafy vegetables are an excellent source of iron, including:

  • spinach
  • kale
  • seaweed
  • watercress
  • broccoli
  • asparagus
  • parsley

Fact or Fiction?                                                                                                                                                          Iron can be found in the Periodic Table of Elements, with the atomic symbol ‘Fe’.   It seems to me, from my experience, that if I come across something with ‘ferr’ at the beginning of the word, it is likely to be linked to iron.  Have you had that experience too?

Comment on your experiences, below!

Water, water everywhere ……..

In STEEAM club on Friday afternoon, as part of our Pelham 100 Project, we had a thought-provoking moment when Adam asked whether there would be enough water in 100 years’ time.

I remembered having read somewhere that the water we have now is the same water as was drunk by the dinosaurs 250 million years ago, and is the same water that was on Earth when it was created.  Another pause for thought.

So I have done a bit of research and sure enough incredibly, in my opinion, we have been recycling the same water for billions of years.  Some people even think that the water came from cosmic particles which were around BEFORE the Earth was formed!

We have the water cycle to thank for the constant source of water.  What we can’t control is the way the water is distributed, though.  Almost all of Earth’s water is undrinkable, as it is salt water – our oceans.  Only 3% of our water is fresh.  Of this, 69% is in glaciers, 30% underground, and less than 1% is located in lakes, rivers and swamps.  Much of this water is not easily accessible to many people on the planet, hence areas of drought and people having to walk miles to find fresh water.

Perhaps that is a problem that the children in STEEAM club can try to find a solution for!

If you want to find out more, here are some interesting articles and websites to look at:

https://www.amnh.org/explore/ology/earth/ask-a-scientist-about-our-environment/will-earth-run-out-of-water  – The fantastic, science website for kids ‘OLogy’ which is part of the American Museum of Natural History website

https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/review/classroom-activities/pdf/cloudsat_web.pdf  – ‘Waterworks on the Blue Planet’ in The Technology Teacher, September 2001, by the International Technology Education Association.  This is an article written by Diane Fisher and was contributed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology.

 

 

Unicorns?

Photo from the BBC News
Photo from The New Daily

 

 

 

 

 

I was amazed when I found out that unicorns used to exist – but they did not look like the elegant, white unicorns we imagine from wonderful fantasy stories, as in the Harry Potter books.

In March 2016, a fossilised skull of the extinct ‘Siberian unicorn‘ (a nickname) was discovered in Kazakhstan (a country which borders on China and Russia). Its nickname originated due to the huge horn that grew out of its forehead.

Carbon dating, which is used to test the age of ancient materials, has proven that it roamed the Earth at the same times as humans! It has been aged at about 29,000 years old, although some scientists think that it is even older.

Elasmotherium sibiricum (the Latin name for it) would have looked a bit like a modern-day rhinoceros but was more like the size of a woolly mammoth. It would have been about 1.8 metres tall, over 4 metres long and weighed about 4 tonnes! Also, it would have been covered in a shaggy coat.

If you would like to find out more about this discovery, the internet link is https://www.natgeokids.com/uk/discover/animals/prehistoric-animals/siberian-unicorn-fossil-discovery-humans/

By the way, speaking of unicorns, there is a wonderful book called ‘The Lion and the Unicorn’ written and illustrated by Shirley Hughes.  It is about a boy who is evacuated during World War 2 while his father is away fighting in the war.

Have something to say? Leave a comment below.

Keep exploring!

Mrs. Sheridan