Corylus Cornuta For Tearless Teething…

[A re-post but with some good stuff that you might otherwise have missed - more medical nonsense and some stuff about teeth.] “…it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.” Macbeth Act 5 Scene 5 I often hear it said that ‘even a child of 12′ knows enough […]

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The Trouble With Two Brains…

Just a little video (actually rather a long 10 minute one!) because Plutonium199 mentioned the corpus callosum in answer to a question on a previous post about the brain. The corpus callosum is the part of the brain that enables the right and left hemispheres to communicate. If it is damaged or removed (for example […]

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Two Cultures…

I apologise in advance for the whimsical nature of this post. If you don’t want ‘philosophy’, you might prefer to read this, this or this; all of which are rich in sciency goodness and have unanswered questions awaiting your comments. I was listening to Flanders and Swann (audio link at the end) and was minded […]

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Hunting Again…

I went to the Boxing Day meet of the Avon Vale Hunt in Lacock yesterday; much as I did last year. The Daily Mail has a splendid photo of the meet in which you might spot a Summerfieldian. It was quite an interesting day because last week the RSPCA successfully prosecuted the Heythrop Hunt for […]

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Naughty Or Nice…

Happy Christmas! It has been suggested that Father Christmas uses cards to decide whether children receive good presents or bad ones. Each card has either Naughty or Nice on one side and a good present (e.g. Xbox) or a bad present (e.g. Egg Box) written on the back. Four of these cards are set out […]

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Rise Of The Retrovirals…

I watched Rise of the Planet of the Apes this evening, which had been recommended (and lent) to me by JHB. He is very kind with such things, even though it sometimes takes me several years to return a DVD. I expect most of you have seen it and marvelled at the effects that seamlessly integrate […]

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More About Chemical Bonds…

I wrote a few months ago, in response to a question from Felix, about the energy changes that occur when reactions happen. Some reactions are exothermic (that means they give out heat) whilst others are endothermic (which means that they absorb heat). Exothermic reactions are hot and endothermic ones are cold. If you have a […]

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Counting Dilemma…

I told 5C today, after we had watched a video about the brain (which I will also post here soon), that everything we see, hear or otherwise experience is generated by our brains and cannot always be trusted. The scientific method allows us to determine what evidence can be trusted by filtering out the biases that […]

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Symphony Of Science…

I was browsing the Symphony Of Science website and thought I would put one of the songs on here. They are videos of scientists talking about “Life, the Universe and Everything” but put to music. A program called Auto-Tune is used to turn normal spoken English into sung lyrics. It is the same technology that Rebecca […]

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Life, The Universe & Everything…

The video below is from the BBC TV series of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. This is based upon the novel by Douglas Adams, which in turn was based upon the radio series of the same name. In the sequence below, the hero, Arthur Dent (an ape-descended Earth man), is learning about an experiment […]

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Alkali Metal Error…

For a few years now I have been showing a clip from Brainiac when discussing the reaction of alkali metals with water. I can remember as a boy watching the following clip and being delighted when a piece of caesium was dropped into the water (that bowl is called a pneumatic trough by the way). I […]

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35 Inconvenient Truths…

In October 2007, Lord Monckton of Brenchley published a response to Al Gore’s book and movie “An Inconvenient Truth”. In it Lord Monckton cites 35 errors in the movie. This came on top of a British judge decreeing that the film contained nine errors that needed to be clearly explained if it was to be used as a teaching aid […]

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