Escape The Science Lab

I like to cook, which usually involves knives. One afternoon I was chopping onions when I unexpectedly removed the tip of my finger. Naturally, I was alarmed at the amount of blood, and I began to wonder if the bleeding would stop but stop it did. Magic? No, your blood has ways of stopping bleeding. Good job, too; it's important stuff. Blood looks like a simple liquid, but it is complicated and carries out several jobs. You may know that red blood cells are carried around in a liquid called plasma. You may also know that these cells contain a chemical called haemoglobin, which gives them their red colour. These little packets move around your circulatory system, transferring oxygen to where it is needed and returning to your lungs to pick up more. Also carried in the plasma are your white blood cells. There are many kinds of these, but they protect you from dangerous invaders. They identify foreign organisms, bacteria, viruses, fungi, or transplanted organs. Once identified, they ...

When I was a child, we had the usual family myths. These included don't drink milk after eating an orange, it will curdle, don’t sit on the cold step or you’ll get king cough (I never found out what that is), and boiled onions in milk stop you from catching a cold (it may just keep people away from you, so you don't catch anything). There was also an obsession with getting enough fibre, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's extreme when you get interrogated about it when visiting your nana. Are any of these ideas true? How can we find out? Part of the science you study in school is how your body works. A vital organ system is your digestive system, not that the rest are unimportant. We don't usually think about what happens after we swallow our tea unless something goes wrong, but an awful lot is happening that we can't see (believe me, that’s a good thing). Most of the chemicals in your food are useless until your digestive system changes them. The prop...

Hang a bar magnet on a piece of thread and wait until it stops moving. One end will eventually point to the north pole of the Earth. This happens because the earth is a giant magnet, and your magnet is lining up with the Earth's magnetic field, which surrounds our planet like a giant bubble and allows us to find our way around. A magnetic field is an invisible force field that surrounds magnets. Other magnets and some metals are influenced if they come into the magnetic field. The magnetic field around a bar magnet is called a butterfly diagram. Perhaps you can see why. The field is why a magnet will stick to a fridge, or two magnets may push each other away. Each magnet’s magnetic field interacts with the other’s, causing attraction or repulsion.  The ends of a magnet are called poles. One end is called the north-seeking pole, and the other is the south-seeking pole. We usually shorten these to north and south. Put two poles that are the same together; they will repel. A north and...

  The brain is the most complex structure we know, so studying and discovering how it works is complex. For many years scientists have had to rely on dissecting brains when they're dead (we hope), which means they're no longer working. Not an ideal way to discover how something works. Another strategy is to study what happens to a person when something goes wrong with their brain, which brings us to the unfortunate Phineas Gage. At approximately 4:30 on 13th September 1848, Gage was working at clearing rock for a new railway. He was preparing an explosive charge, using a long metal rod to pack the explosives into a hole drilled into the rock. A spark caused the charge to explode, propelling the rod up through his cheek and out through the top of his head. The rod was blown 25m away from the accident. Miraculously Gage survived this. Stories of his treatment following the accident are full of brain matter falling out of wounds and infections. The doctors could even see his '...

 You may of heard how Galileo got into trouble for claiming that the Earth orbits the Sun. Did you know there were others that were saying the same thing? In the 16th century, Johannes Kepler was one of these. He was an astronomer who took measurements of the stars, but also an astrologer, producing horoscopes for the rich and powerful. Back then, the lines between science and mysticism were blurred and Isaac Newton himself was as much an alchemist as a scientist.  Kepler took measurements of the movements of the planets, checking the measurements of other natural philosophers*. You can easily see planets with the naked eye, binoculars, or telescopes. They look like bright stars, but they move from night-to-night, giving them their name 'planetai' or 'wanderer'. Back in the 16th century six planets had been discovered.  Kepler's idea of how they moved in their orbits was mixed with some ideas that we may find strange today. He combined his measurements with ideas th...

  Ever wondered how a rainbow forms? Raindrops act like a prism and split the light into the colours of the visible spectrum. The splitting is called dispersion. The splitting is caused by refraction. That's not the whole story though. After entering the raindrop, the light is reflected off the back surface. It then travels out of the front of the drop, refracting again at the boundary. If, when this light leaves the raindrop, it happens to travel to your eyes, you see the familiar bow in the sky. What this means is that nobody sees the same rainbow as you. A friend stood next to you sees the light that has been refracted in their direction. Ever heard of the famous double rainbow? They are formed when the light reflects twice inside the raindrop. Have you ever noticed that the colours in the second rainbow are reversed? The diagram above shows why. Other affects you may notice when you see a good rainbow are supernumerary bows (green and magenta bows underneath the other bows. The...

  The splitting of light when it travels into a prism is called dispersion. The splitting is caused by refraction. Refraction occurs when light moves from one material to another. Each wavelength of light is refracted through a different angle, so the colours separate. One of the most famous effects of dispersion is the rainbow. These are always good to see, but there are many more atmospheric light effects to look out for. In this image, you can see a halo around the sun, two sundogs (parhelia) on the left and right of the halo, an upper tangent arc (on top of the halo), a parhelic arc (going through the two sundogs) and infralateral arcs (far left and right of the image). These are all caused by ice crystals refracting light. Look  here  for some other light effects you may see in the atmosphere. I would really like to see the spooky Brocken Spectre. The light really is fantastic. Take up my escape challenge by clicking on the image below.