#TryThisTuesday: Curly Fries!

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Today we are looking at the science behind curly potato fries. First, let’s talk about how we make them.

  1. Carefully chop up a potato into straight thick chips.
  2. Boil around 250ml of water and stir salt into this water until no more salt will dissolve.
  3. Fill a bowl with tap water and place half of your chips into this bowl.
  4. When the salty water has cooled pour it into another bowl and add the rest of your chips to this.p1020750
  5. Leave both bowls of chips out overnight.
  6. The next day you should have one bowl of chips that are still hard and straight and the other bowl (with salty water in) will be full of chips that are more flexible, that you can shape into curls.

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The Science

The addition of salt to the water allows you to make curly fries due to osmosis. Osmosis is the movement of water from an area that has few molecules in the water to an area that has more molecules in it to try to even things out and create a balance.

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Plants like our potato here are made up of millions of cells that have a cell membrane around its edge which allows some things in and not others. Water can easily flow through this but the salt we dissolved in it can’t. Cells are filled with lots of little molecules so water usually flows into the cells and fills them to dilute the liquid. But when we have lots of salt in the water, there are more particles in the water outside of the potato cells than inside so the water leaves the cells.

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bendyWhen cells are filled with water they are quite rigid and packed closely together making a fairly sturdy chip. When the cells are dehydrated, they are smaller leaving space between cells, allowing the chip to bend without snapping.

Osmosis is used in all plants – not just when you cut them up and put them in a bowl of water! Plants use osmosis in their roots to allow water to move from the soil into their roots.

 

Exoplanet discovery

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Recently NASA have found the TRAPPIST-1 Solar System (named after the TRAnsmitting Planets and Plantisemals I Small Telescope). It is 40 light years away in the constellation of Aquarius and has seven Earth size Exoplanets (planets that orbit a star that isn’t the Sun) that have the potential to support life.

This is a big discovery as it is the largest amount of Earth sized planets ever found around a single star and it might help in the search for life on other planets. trappist

How did they find the TRAPPIST-1 Solar System?

  • The Star in the centre of the solar system glows brightest in infra-red light which can’t be detected by the human eye
  • The infra red light was detected by an infra red telescope called the Spitzer. This telescope is in space and follows the orbit of the Earth.
  • The radiation (light) detected from the TRAPPIST-1 star would periodically dim and then brighten again; this could show that a planet could be passing in front of the star.
  • The dips in light were not always the same amount, showing that there were actually seven exoplanets orbiting the star.
  • NASA used the dips in radiation to calculate the size of each planet in the solar system.
  • Space in between the dips in radiation means they can work out how it takes for a planet to orbit the star.
  • The planets were found to be very close together with orbits that interfere with each other due to gravity.
  • They used the estimated size of the planets to work out what the density of each planet is, to work out what the planet might be made of.
  • All seven planets may be suitable of supporting liquid water, with three in the habitable zone capable of having oceans.
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The Spitzer Telescope

What next?

It’s really rare to find this many planets that may support life in one solar system so its important to find out more about them. NASA are going to use transmission spectroscopy to study the composition of the seven exoplanets. This is a technique that gives information about the chemical composition of a planet and whether a planet has an atmosphere.

They are using more telescopes to study some of the other ultracool dwarf stars (like TRAPPIST-1), to see if they also have exoplanets that could support life.

#TryThisTuesday: Homemade Ice cream!

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This week we’re making ice cream but instead of using an ice cream machine, we’re going to make it using science!

You will need:

  • Two Ziploc bags – one small, one large
  • 100ml double cream
  • 50ml milk
  • 40g sugar
  • Vanilla extract
  • Ice
  • Salt

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  1. Measure out the milk, cream and sugar and place them into the smaller Ziploc bag.
  2. Add a dash of vanilla extract  then zip up the bag.
  3. Fill the larger bag 2/3 full with ice.
  4. Pour a generous amount of salt onto the ice.p1020738-3
  5. Making sure the small bag is tightly zipped up, place it inside the bigger bag with the salt and ice.
  6. Gently shake the bag for 5-10 minutes, be careful not to rip the bag!
  7. Leave the ice cream to sit inside the ice and salt bag for another 10 minutes
  8. Open up your bag and enjoy!

p1020740-2Try making different flavours of ice cream by swapping the vanilla extract for strawberry or mint extract or even cocoa powder for chocolate ice cream. You could also try adding chocolate chips.

 

 

 

 

How does this work?

Water, as I’m sure you know, freezes to make ice at 0oC. But your freezer at home is around -18oC, so how are we making the ice cold enough to freeze your creamy mixture? The secret is in the salt.

Ice is in a constant state of melting and refreezing and melting and refreezing. When we add salt, the salt particles block the path of the melted ice, stopping it from freezing back on to the rest of the ice but ice can still melt. Therefore more ice is melting that freezing.

Now you may be thinking that surely if the ice is melting that means it is getting warmer? It’s actually the opposite. For ice to melt it needs to break the bonds that are formed between the H2O molecules. This breaking requires energy which it gets in the form of heat. When a molecule melts away a bond is broken, taking heat away from the surrounding, causing the temperature to drop.

This is also the reason that salt is put on icy roads – it stops water forming ice.

#TryThisTuesday: Guess The Flavour

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For this Try This Tuesday all you will need is some starburst or chewy fruit sweets.img_4490

Close your eyes and pick a starburst at random without looking. Unwrap it with your eyes closed.

Hold your nose and eat the starburst, make sure you keep holding your nose the whole time.

Can you guess the flavour without looking at the colour of the sweet or the wrapper? You might get some of them wrong!

If you let go of your nose halfway through chewing, you might suddenly be able to taste the flavour.

The Science

Smell and taste are really closely linked, so it is really hard to guess the flavour of the starburst when you hold your nose. About 90% of what we taste is due to smell. Both senses use similar receptors and rely on the same molecules to send messages to the brain about what you can taste and smell. Flavour is actually a mix of taste, smell, texture and other cues like temperature.

It is also important to close your eyes when you eat the starburst, as you can make unconscious links between colour and flavour. Our brain is really good at picking up associations such as a purple coloured sweet is likely to taste of blackcurrant. When the colour makes us expect something to taste a certain way, we taste what we expect unless it’s really different.

This colour association affects some people worse than others,  the pathways to the brain can get crossed over causing synaethesia. This might mean that when they see yellow – they taste lemon.

Inspiring Female Scientists from Newcastle #BeBoldForChange

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Susan Mary Auld

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Susan was born in Tynemouth in 1915 and was the first woman to graduate as a naval architect from Armstrong College at what was then Durham University. She went on to have an illustrious career as a pioneering architect in the Royal Navy. She was responsible for designing the floating vessels that were used to land Allied troops on D-Day in France in 1944.

Myriam Neaimeh

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Myriam Neaimeh is a researcher at Newcastle University who specialises in renewable technology and smart cities. She is currently working with Japanese car giant Nissan to investigate if batteries from electric cars can be re-used to power homes in the future. She is also a talented footballer and plays in midfield for Newcastle United Women’s FC (having been an international player in her home country of Lebanon).

Nicola Curtin

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Professor Nicola Curtin from Newcastle University, has been leading research into the development of ‘smart’ cancer drugs called PARP inhibitors. Since 2008 more than 7,000 patients have been treated during trials of the drugs, which have fewer side effects than chemotherapy. They work by targeting a weakness in cancer cells and stop an enzyme (PARP) from repairing their DNA. In 2010 her team were awarded the Translational Cancer Research Prize by Cancer Research UK.

Rachel Parsons

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Rachel Parsons was born in 1855 into a family of engineers and grew up in Tyneside. In 1910 she was one of the first three women to study Mechanical Sciences at Newnham College, Cambridge. As a woman she was unable to graduate but went on to become a director of her father’s Steam Turbine Company based in Wallsend. She oversaw the recruitment and training of women to replace the men who had left to join the armed forces and campaigned for equal access for all to technical schools and colleges. She was also a founder member of the Women’s Engineering Society.

Chi Onwurah

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Chi Onwurah was born in Wallsend and, after a couple of years in Nigeria, returned with her mother to the North East. She studied Electrical Engineering at Imperial College London and went on to have a position as Head of Telecoms Technology at OFCOM. She was elected to Parliament in 2010 and has campaigned about the lack of women in engineering jobs in the UK (which has the lowest proportion in Europe) and the limiting of children by gender stereotypes. She regularly supports activities that encourage girls into STEM.

Zoe Williams

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Zoe Williams is a well-known TV personality who studied medicine at Newcastle University from 2001. She makes regular appearances on This Morning and Trust Me I’m a Doctor and she works with Public Health England as a clinical champion for physical activity. She founded Fit4Life which runs inspiring children’s workshops about healthy living. She has competed in a number of professional sports including Athletics and Rugby Union and appeared as ‘Amazon’ on Sky 1’s Gladiators.

Helen Foster

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Professor Helen Foster led a team of Newcastle University scientists to research a better way of diagnosing childhood arthritis. Until recently there wasn’t an agreed way of assessing children’s joints which caused delays in treatment and unnecessary invasive investigations. The team developed a new tool for joint examination called pGALS which is now taught to medical students and used by doctors across the world. As a result of this success the team went on to develop free teaching resources and video demonstrations for a more detailed examination (pREMS).

#TryThisTuesday: Making coins shiny again

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New coins are always bright and shiny but they quickly become dull and tarnished. Today we are going to make our coins shiny again!

You will need 100ml of vinegar, some tarnished copper coins and a bowl.vinegar

Pour the vinegar into the bowl and add the salt. Mix until the salt is dissolved.

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Try dipping a coin in and holding it there for 5 minutes. See how half becomes really shiny!

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Put all your coins in and leave for 30 minutes. If you put lots of coins in the vinegar may turn green.img_4337

Make sure you rinse all the coins with clean water.

The Science

Coins become dirty due to oxygen in the air reacting with the metal to form copper oxide. They become darker as they age as the oxide layer increases. Vinegar is an acid (acetic acid) which can be used to clean up surfaces and remove the unwanted oxides. Acids release positively charged hydrogen atoms, also known as Hydrogen ions (H+) which react with the negatively charged oxygen in copper oxide and produce water (H2O). The copper that was linked to the oxygen dissolves leaving a nice shiny surface.

If your vinegar turned green this is due to all the copper dissolving and producing copper acetate.

Real World Applications

Iron that is used to make cars, trucks and boats can also react with the oxygen in the air and oxidise, producing rust. If a car gets rusty, mechanics can use phosphoric acid  to remove it. It reacts with the rust, removing the oxide and replacing it with a layer of iron phosphate. This also protects the metal from rusting further.

Phosphoric acid is also found in coca cola, which is why it is so good at dissolving your teeth!

#TryThisTuesday: Oil and Water

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For this experiment all you will need is a clear bottle or jar with a lid, water, cooking oil and some washing up liquid.

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Fill the water bottle half full with water.

Pour about 100ml of oil in to the bottle and observe what happens.

The oil should float on the water. Try and mix them together or challenge other people to mix them! It is impossible, the oil and water always separate out again.

Add a squeeze of washing up liquid to the bottle and shake. The oil and water now mix together.

The Science

Oil is less dense than water so floats on top. Oil and water don’t mix together as the water molecules are more attracted to each other than the oil molecules. Oil molecules are hydrophobic or ‘water-fearing’.

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Washing up liquid molecules are attracted to both water and oil. When you add a squirt in, one end of the washing up liquid molecule attaches to a water molecule and the other end attaches to an oil molecule. This creates a mix of water with oil droplets spread throughout it. This is because one end of the washing up liquid molecule is hydrophobic (water fearing) and one is hydrophilic (water loving).

The washing up liquid acts as a stabiliser and creates an emulsion. This is a mixture of two liquids that wouldn’t normally mix.

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Real Life Applications

We use washing up liquid when we are washing up as it attaches to the oil on the dirty dishes and lifts it off into the water.

Animals that live in the ocean also stay warm by producing an oily substance on their fur or feathers which keeps the cold water away from their skin.

#TryThisTuesday: DIY Sci-Fi Laser Sound

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This week we will show you how to create sci-fi laser sound effects using a slinky and a cup.

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The first step is to try and listen to the noise a slinky makes on its own by moving it up and down so the bottom of it bounces off the floor as shown in the picture below.

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The next step is to place the cup in the top of the slinky as shown below and try the same movement.

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The Science

Sound is actually particle vibrations and travels in waves. This means it relies on particles colliding to transfer the sound energy. In a gas such as air the particles are really spread out which means they are less likely to collide. In solids the particles are much closer together which means the particles collide a lot more and the sound energy is transferred more effectively.

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This is why the sound is much louder when the sound waves travel through the solid cup as opposed to the air. Rumour has it that they actually used this same technique to make the laser sound effects in the original Star Wars movies back in 1977.

Meet the Engineers

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Recently we hosted the Engineering Education Scheme at Newcastle. Year 12 students from the local area worked with industry to come up with solutions to real life engineering problems. We spoke to some of the engineers who helped on these projects to see what it’s like to be an engineer.

BAE Systems

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Where and what did you study at university?

Naomi studied a Masters in Chemistry at Heriot Watt University.

Martin studied Aerospace Engineering at Bath University.

Why did you choose to study engineering? 

Martin enjoyed studying Maths, Further Maths and Physics at A-Level, so decided to do engineering as it involves them all.

What do you do at your job?

Naomi is a product safety engineer. She looks at all the different types of engineering in submarines such as ventilation and the electricity and makes sure that they all mix well. She is responsible for putting processes in place to make sure that if something happens it doesn’t escalate.

Martin is a systems Engineer and has to make sure things work and integrate engineering systems.

What is the best thing you have done as an engineer?

Naomi’s favorite thing was working on Conning tower flooding (where the doors of the submarine are). If all the hatches are opened at the top of the submarine, when its at the surface it could flood. She looked at how much water a submarine could take on using models on a computer, it was really successful as it meant they stopped a big redesign of submarines.

Martin enjoys providing support for boats that are currently out on the sea. The project gave him a chance to collaborate with lots of different departments and they solved a big problem of one boat’s secondary motor  which kept turning itself on and off by mistake.

Do you have any advice for students thinking about studying engineering?

Their advice is to have confidence in what you do and pick something you enjoy.

Pearson Engineering

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Rosie is a graduate engineer for Pearson Engineering, who’s job involves looking at mine clearance vehicles, some of which can defuse bombs by lifting them in the air.

Where/what did you study at university?

Undergraduate in Chemistry and a Masters in Mechanical Engineering at Newcastle University.

Why did you choose to study engineering?

Rosie initially became a primary school teacher after her undergraduate degree in chemistry but missed being challenged intellectually so decided to become an engineer.

What is the best thing you have done as an engineer?

Rosie has really enjoyed working with the students at EES, as she likes working with young people.

GE Oil and Gas

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Joshua and Charlie are both in their second year of studying Mechanical Engineering at Newcastle University. They work as interns at GE Oil and Gas alongside their studies.

Why did you choose to study engineering?types-of-engineering

Joshua always liked physics and did some work experience in engineering when he was at school that he really enjoyed. He decided to go to university rather than be an apprentice as you get more hands on experience.

Charlie enjoyed studying maths and physics at school and wanted to apply it in a practical way.

What do you do at your job?

Both of them are interns but have the opportunities to do lots of different jobs.

Joshua is currently looking at the clamps, fixtures and fittings for pipes. This is really important for transporting things such as gas and oil. He carries out analysis and design using computer programmes and lots of maths.

Charlie is also working on pipes. Lots of what she does is communicating with customers to design pipes and talk about things such as price too, showing there is lots more to engineering than just being an engineer.

What is the best thing you have done as an engineer?

Joshua has really enjoyed doing an internship as its allowed him to link the real world with what he is doing at university.

Charlie had been working as a STEM ambassador to encourage girls into engineering. She wants everyone to know that engineering is much more than just fixing things and anyone can be an engineer.

Do you have any advice for students thinking about studying engineering?

Joshua’s advice is try and do some work experience, but be prepared to work hard.

Charlie says that you shouldn’t be put off by what you think engineering is, try and find out more about it as it spans many areas.

 

 

#TryThisTuesday: Valentine’s Day Optical Illusion

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Happy Valentine’s Day! Love can confuse your brain, and so does this week’s Try This Tuesday.

You don’t need any equipment to try this experiment at home – you just need to stare at your screen, or more specifically the + in the middle of the picture below. You can blink but don’t look away.

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If you stare long enough the pink dots should disappear!

The Science

It looks like the pink dots have disappeared due to a visual phenomenon called Troxler’s fading or Troxler’s effect. if you fix your eyes on a certain point, then anything in your peripheral vision will fade away and disappear after about 20 seconds. In this experiment our sight was focused on the + in the middle of the screen and the the pink dots in your periphery slowly fade and finally disappear. It works especially well in this experiment at there is such low contrast between the light pink dots and the grey background.

This is a type of optical illusion. If you want to see another, have a look at our spinning disk Try This Tuesday.