Issue 37
Editorials
Editorial issue 37
The new academic year is a time for new beginnings: new challenges, opportunities, students, colleagues and, most importantly, new ideas. Possibilities stretch out before us, each one beckoning us to a different outcome.
News from the EIROs
Sign up your students to see the large and the small
Science in School is published by EIROforum, a collaboration between eight of Europe’s largest inter-governmental scientific research organisations (EIROs). This article reviews some of the latest news from the EIROs.
Understand
The element of surprise
Studies of radiocarbon are helping scientists to understand how neurons remain stable yet adaptable.
Self-healing aircraft wings: a dream or a possibility?
Taking inspiration from nature’s amazing ability to heal wounds, this biology-inspired technology could create aircraft wings that fix themselves.
Galaxies: genesis and evolution
Astronomers are still trying to discover exactly why galaxies formed in spiral shapes, and what’s likely to happen to our galaxy in the future.
Inspire
CERN’s high-school physics competition shines bright
Win the Beamline for Schools competition and take a trip to CERN to do your own real-life particle physics experiment.
History in the making
How Anne-Flore Laloë is chronicling the life and works of a scientific institution.
e-only Unravelling epigenetics
Our genetic information is encoded in our DNA, but that is only part of the story.
- Read: English, Italian, Portuguese, Greek
e-only Conferences and the classroom
A teacher from Hannover, Germany, explains how scientific conferences enrich her teaching.
- Read: English
e-only What on Earth?
Earth science is all around us.
- Read: English
Teach
Can something accelerate upwards while falling down?
Use one of the most surprising experiments in classical mechanics to teach the scientific method, video analysis and mechanics.
Sharp eyes: how well can we really see?
Exploring visual acuity requires not only biological experiments, but also some understanding of the underlying physics.
What are stars made of?
Find out how we know what the Sun (and stars) are made of.
Melts in your viscometer, not in your hand
Teaching viscosity can be sweetened by using chocolate.
Measuring the explosiveness of a volcanic eruption
Using effervescent heartburn tablets, model the action of volcanoes to measure the intensity of the explosions and create your own measurement scale.
Plasma: The fourth state
Plasma is the fourth state of matter, after solid, liquid and gas – but what is it like and what can it do? Plasma globes allow us to answer these questions – and more.
