TOP 100 SCIENCE SITES
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| Digital Tasmania welcomes support for broadband plan A Tasmanian digital consumer group has praised the two independents for supporting Labor's broadband plan. abc.net.au |
Physique? C'est tout le Français à moi | Herbi Dreiner Herbi Dreiner on translating his award-winning physics show into French, and preparing to deliver it at CernIn Bonn, we have been putting on a physics show for kids aged 10 and older for 8 years. It is a show full of exciting live experiments. The shows have typically covered most of classical physics and are supposed to be entertaining and of course also educational. The novelty is that it is prepared and put on by the physics students themselves, not me or another professor. Furthermore it is a new group of students and a new show every year. Thus we have trained a large group of physics students in outreach activity and can now tackle more challenging projects. In the autumn of 2008 the German science ministry (BMBF) organized a special exhibit in Berlin for the initial start of the LHC and called it "Weltmaschine", world machine. Another one of these marvellous long German words. The exhibit was in a brand new tube station inbetween the Bundeskanzleramt, where Angela Merkel works, and the Reichstag, the German parliament. The station was built specifically with exhibitions and shows in mind ... in May 2008 the Magic Flute was performed on the platform.The organising committee asked us to put on a particle physics show as a special event at the exhibition, covering most topics relevant to the LHC. We set up a replica stage in Bonn and rehearsed on several weekends in a row, since this was during term time. In November 2008, we travelled with 18 students to the heart of Berlin and put on four shows to a packed audience. It was a huge success and great fun for all of us. Since then we have put on the show at the great science museum in Munich, the Deutsche Museum (Mar 09), to the particle physics lab DESY in Hamburg (Sept 09), and to Heidelberg University (Dec 2009). I then went on sabbatical with my family for six months to California to recover. During this time we were stunned and honoured to receive an invitation from Cern to perform our show in Geneva, in September 2010. The only difficulty: it should be in French. This made sense, since they want to reach the local school kids. But frightening all the same. When I put the proposal to the Bonn students in an email, I was overwhelmed with a barrage of French emails. Alors: pas de problem ... or so we thought.The past two weeks we have been rehearsing in Bonn. On Friday we packed our four vans, two full of equipment, and two for the 15 students and us three old guys. Due to special regulations for weakly radioactive sources used in school experiments, the two equipment vans had to travel through the EU and thus the two-hour longer route through France. (You wouldn't believe the paperwork!) They departed yesterday at 5.30am; the rest of us left at 7.30am for an eight-hour drive. By 3.30pm, we were all here. The Mont Blanc was out in full force towelcome us. And then, Wow! The Globe at Cern. We were totally overwhelmed. It is, as the name suggests, a huge hollow sphere all made of recycled wood. The auditorium is in the upper half and has a skylight about 15 metres above the floor and a dramatic ramp wrapped around the stage. What a phantastic place for a physics show.Meanwhile, we have been frantically rehearsing all day today. For the two MCs we have set up a teleprompter, since they are not comfortable enough in French to learn the entire text by heart. The rest of us are trying to learn the words connected to the experiments we demonstrate, so that we don't miss our cues. The students are in great spirits. The sun is shining and hopefully we are all set for the first performance tomorrow morning. Let the show begin!Jon Butterworthguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Tube-nosed bat among species found in PNG Scientists have discovered more than 200 species of plants and animals in remote parts of Papua New Guinea. abc.net.au |
Toxic coal sludge pollutes Ky. town 10 years later By DYLAN LOVAN 2010-10-10T19:27:25ZLOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) -- In parts of eastern Kentucky, the pictures coming out of Hungary of the red sludge that roared from a factory's reservoir, downstream into the Danube River, are all too reminiscent of what happened a decade ago this week.... hosted.ap.org |
Senate passes legislation to split Telstra The Federal Government has secured passage through the Senate of its legislation to split Telstra's wholesale and retail operations. abc.net.au |