May 2008 Archives
Ooh, that’s nice. We’re on the BBC again.
Technology magazine show Click featured SciCast last November, as part of their Webscape strand, and they’re running an updated story this week. It played over the weekend on BBC News 24 and (perhaps — we missed it, sadly) breakfast news on BBC1 on Saturday. I believe it’s also playing on BBC World through the week.
If you’ve missed the broadcast, you should be able to watch it here, or for the next few days (for UK readers) there’s a higher-quality version on iPlayer. The SciCast part starts about 16:45 in.
Nice post at leading UK environment blog Environmental Graffiti about our Vacuum Bazooka film, complete with amusingly tenuous link to low pressure weather systems. Come on, folks, you’re just having fun knocking over plant pots, right?
Meanwhile: you may have noticed the total lack of films about environmental issues. Why? Simple — nobody made any. Seems like a hole that needs filling, no?
The National Physical Laboratory are taking entries for their annual Water Rocket Challenge event, to be held on 25th June. Head on over to their website to sign up, and for a terrific guidebook on all things water rocket.
Also head to the main SciCast site for a film of last year’s competition, for an idea of what you’re letting yourself in for.
The Royal Institution in London, home of the famous televised Christmas Lectures, has been renovated over the last couple of years. The official reopening of the restored and remodeled building is happening soon, with Her Majesty The Queen as the guest of honour.
You could be there too, performing an experiment for her!
More details here, but be quick - the closing date is next Wednesday!
You might have noticed these creeping in over the last few days, but: they’re back! It’s a slightly different set of photos to before, so if you’re missing one you particularly wanted please drop us a line.
Good places to start are the Ceremony and Reception sets, or just dive in to the full album. As before, if you click through to individual photos you’ll find an ‘all sizes’ button that allows you to download large versions for printing.
We took the photos down, by the way, because we’d casually given everyone at the event a name badge. Since we’ve spent the last two years trying very hard to avoid publishing likeness, name and school for individual children, this wasn’t the brightest thing we’ve done. This new set of photos, then, has names painted out (some more neatly than others, I’m sorry to say), and next year the badges will be first names only.
Live and learn, eh?
Here’s a terrific video of an elegant way of synchronising metronomes. More along the same lines here and here.
Remember, if you wanted to enter a film of this terrific and unusual demonstration into the SciCast Physics competition, you’d have to write an explanation of what’s going on. Which should keep you busy for a while, I’d have thought.
(found via Kottke, who notes ‘if you watch only one metronome video in your life, make it this one.’)
[update 30/5/2008: YouTube-embedded video removed, on account of their suggestions for further viewing appearing to be… er… ‘not suitable for all audiences.’ The situation isn’t as alarming as that description might suggest, but some readers here have expressed concerns that we’ve been taken over somehow. We haven’t.
However, it looks like embedding video from YouTube is no longer an option for us, since we don’t get enough control over what you see on this site, let alone at theirs. This is, of course, one of the reasons SciCast isn’t built on YouTube in the first place.
Now would also be an appropriate time to remind everyone that we can’t be responsible for external websites. We’d never knowingly link to anything offensive, but we can’t guarantee that the pages to which we link will still be the same when you click through to them.
If, as here, you find something offensive, please alert us to the issue, either in comments, or by email. Our thanks to the readers who informed us of this situation.]
We’ve posted loads — and we really do mean loads — of photos from last Friday’s awards to the SciCast Flickr account.
If you click through to the individual photos you’ll find an ‘All sizes’ button, which allows you to download a really gigantic version of each photo, suitable for printing.
We’ll work our way through and caption the photos as best we can, but you can help us by leaving comments. In particular, do let us know if we’ve labelled anything incorrectly, and we’ll get it sorted.
(These photos are all by Laura Mtungwazi, who worked her socks off and did a great job.)
[UPDATE Saturday 3/5/2008: we’ve taken the gallery down temporarily while we sort some details. The photos will be back as soon as we can manage.]
[UPDATE 2 Thursday 8/5/2008: The photos are back up again - see this post for details.]
