How to make chemistry fun for kids

Why is breakfast cereal magnetic? How does sand help you to see? Why did that German guy try to turn wee into gold and what did he find instead?
Elements of the Day doesn't just blast off soon-to-be-forgotten facts about the periodic table. It tells the story of chemical elements in our everyday lives by fusing them with the daily, domestic moments that will be familiar to every child.
It's a clever formula — and an effective one. From wake up to bedtime, we are introduced to many of the scientific miracles that are happening all around us.
'Elements — and all the stuff you can build from them — make every part of your day possible in unexpected and fascinating ways, though most people don't give them much thought. However, once you open your eyes, you'll start seeing lots of these elements in your daily life,' the author Samantha Lewis says as she urges young readers to experiment with their breakfast.

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The Independent

15 hours ago

• The Independent

King Charles pays tribute to ‘resilience' of Antarctic scientists facing 24 hours of darkness

King Charles sent a personal message to British Antarctic researchers to mark the southern hemisphere's shortest day, praising their "critically important" scientific work. The message, part of the BBC World Service's midwinter broadcast, highlighted the researchers' resilience and commitment to understanding Earth's fragile systems. Charles, a known environmental advocate, stressed the importance of collaboration and giving back to nature to sustain the planet. The midwinter broadcast is a tradition for personnel at British Antarctic Survey stations, involving celebrations, music, and messages from home. This Antarctic midwinter coincides with high temperatures and thunderstorm warnings across parts of the UK, potentially leading to the hottest day of the year.

Daily Mail​

18 hours ago

• Daily Mail​

Mini black holes could be hiding in your HOME, scientists warn

Black holes are some of the most violent and destructive objects in the universe. And as terrifying as it sounds, thousands of these mysterious voids could be whizzing through your home at this very moment. Scientists believe the universe may be littered with objects called primordial black holes. According to some calculations, as many as 1,000 could be passing through every square metre of the planet each year. One of these black holes might even blast straight through your head, without you ever knowing it was there. Primordial black holes are ancient entities formed in the very first moments of the Big Bang, which have been drifting through the universe ever since. However, these are not the star-swallowing, galaxy-churning supermassive black holes that appear in science-fiction blockbusters like Interstellar. Instead, they are microscopic singularities no larger than a hydrogen atom, ranging from the mass of a single bacterium to that of a medium-sized asteroid. The black holes in your home Typically, black holes form when a star with a lot of mass collapses in on itself until it forms an ultra-dense point known as a singularity. These points of matter have such a strong gravitational pull that even light is pulled in - hence why they appear 'black'. However, primordial black holes might form in a slightly different way. In fact, these would have formed so early on in the universe that stars wouldn't have even had time to form. Dr De-Chang Dai, a black hole researcher from Yangzhou University, China, told MailOnline: 'Primordial black holes are black holes created soon after the Big Bang. 'At this period, the temperature and energy density of the universe were very high.' So, when small pockets of 'overdense' matter formed, this high energy squished them into very small black holes. What are primordial black holes? Primordial black holes are microscopic pieces of ultra-dense matter, just like normal black holes but smaller. Scientists think they may have been formed at the very beginning of the universe rather than out of collapsing stars. Their masses could range between 100,000 times less than a paperclip to 100,000 times greater than the sun. We haven't found proof that they exist, but they might form part of the 'dark matter' which makes up a large part of the mass of the universe. Over the 13.8 billion years that followed, some of these black holes would have slowly evaporated away through a process called Hawking Radiation, leaving behind only tiny remnants. The main reason scientists are so interested in these currently theoretical objects is that they are one of the best candidates for dark matter. Dark matter is a hypothetical substance which scientists have proposed to make up the mass which seems to be missing from galaxies. Although we can't see it or interact with it, scientists estimate that dark matter might make up around 27 per cent of the universe. Since primordial black holes don't radiate much energy and are almost impossible to detect, while also holding a lot of mass, they are a good fit for this role. Professor Dejan Stojkovic, a black hole physicist from the University at Buffalo, told MailOnline: 'In the light of all these null results from the direct and indirect dark matter searches, primordial black holes appear to be the least exotic possibility.' If these tiny black holes really are what scientists have been calling 'dark matter' then they should be found almost everywhere in the universe, including in our solar system. How many primordial black holes are there? Since we know how much dark matter there is supposed to be, scientists can actually work out how many primordial black holes we should expect to encounter. However, this will depend on how much mass scientists think a primordial black hole contains. Dr Sarah Geller, a theoretical physicist from UC Santa Cruz, says that if primordial black holes exist then they probably have a mass of 'a billion billion grams each' - around the size of an asteroid. Dr Geller says: 'Supposing that they make up all of the dark matter then we can expect there to be at least one within a distance of 5 Astronomical Units from the Sun - a distance of about Jupiter's orbit.' Likewise, Valentin Thoss, a black hole researcher and PhD candidate at the University of Munich told MailOnline: 'If their mass is ten trillion tonnes, which is comparable to a very heavy asteroid, there would be on average a few dozen within the planetary zone of the solar system. 'Within 20 years we can expect one to fly past Earth at a distance of around 200 million kilometres, which is roughly the distance between the sun and Earth.' However, the lighter each individual black hole is the more will be needed to make up the mass of dark matter in the universe, and some researchers think they could be much lighter. Scientists used to think that black holes would eventually evaporate over time to the point that they just vanished. But new research suggests that there might be a limit which slows down this evaporation over time until they reach a stable mass. This could allow black holes to be much smaller than researchers had previously thought possible. Professor Stojkovic suggests that all the primordial black holes might have shrunk to become 'Planck mass remnants', weighing just 10 micrograms. At this mass, the universe would be so full of primordial black holes that 1,000 per year would pass through every square metre of Earth. What happens if a black hole hits me? The fact that there are black holes hanging around the solar system might sound alarming, but just how worrying that is depends on the black holes' mass. If the black holes are as small as Professor Stojkovic suggests they could be, then there is nothing to worry about at all. '1000 crossings per year per square metre is not drastic at all since 10 micrograms is about the mass of a bacteria. 'We have trillions of bacteria around us at any moment, though they are not moving very fast.' These tiny black holes would pass through your body without even disturbing your cells, let alone causing any noticeable damage. As the predicted mass of the black holes gets larger the chances of one hitting Earth becomes rarer, but they also have the possibility of creating more damage. Travelling at around 180 miles per second (300 kilometres per second) a black hole with a mass between that of an asteroid and a small planet would pass through Earth in seconds. However, this wouldn't be like an asteroid of normal density hitting Earth. Because primordial black holes are so small, about the size of an atom, scientists say their passage through solid matter would be like a bullet going through a cloud. If one were to hit Earth it might leave a very small tunnel straight through the planet and create some unusual seismic signals but otherwise wouldn't be detectable. But if one of these larger primordial black holes hit you, then you definitely would feel it. Dr Geller says: 'Most likely this wouldn't be great for that person's health. 'The primordial black hole would go right through a person, and though it leaves only a very tiny hole, it might impart some velocity and give the person a real kick!' Previous calculations suggest that a black hole with a mass of seven trillion tonnes would hit with as much force as a .22-calibre rifle bullet. Just like a gunshot, that would be enough power to rupture organs, tear flesh, and destroy your brain. Fortunately, this is right up at the higher end of primordial black holes possible masses and you would need to be extremely unlucky to encounter one of these. Dr Geller says:' In practice, the chances of such a collision are vanishingly tiny: it's much more likely you could succeed in dropping a peanut from an aeroplane at random into a field the size of a million football fields and hit a single specific blade of grass.' BLACK HOLES HAVE A GRAVITATIONAL PULL SO STRONG NOT EVEN LIGHT CAN ESCAPE Black holes are so dense and their gravitational pull is so strong that no form of radiation can escape them - not even light. They act as intense sources of gravity which hoover up dust and gas around them. Their intense gravitational pull is thought to be what stars in galaxies orbit around. How they are formed is still poorly understood. Astronomers believe they may form when a large cloud of gas up to 100,000 times bigger than the sun, collapses into a black hole. Many of these black hole seeds then merge to form much larger supermassive black holes, which are found at the centre of every known massive galaxy. Alternatively, a supermassive black hole seed could come from a giant star, about 100 times the sun's mass, that ultimately forms into a black hole after it runs out of fuel and collapses. When these giant stars die, they also go 'supernova', a huge explosion that expels the matter from the outer layers of the star into deep space.

Metro

a day ago

• Metro

Human population nearly went extinct – with just 1,280 people left

Hiyah Zaidi Published June 20, 2025 12:50pm Link is copied Comments Humans have been around for a while, but we haven't always been an abundant species. In fact, ancient humanity was almost wiped out around 900,000 years ago and the global population dwindled to a mere 1,280 reproducing individuals, a study claims. And the researchers also claim that they stayed like this for 117,000 years. So, what is going on? (Picture: Getty) The study, which is published in the journal Science, reveals human ancestors in Africa almost faced extinction, and the research suggests there was a drastic reduction in the population of our ancestors well before our species, Homo sapiens, also known as modern humans, emerged. The information is based on a new computer model developed by a group of scientists based in China, Italy and the United States (Picture: Getty) The researchers used a statistical method and gathered genetic information from 3,154 present-day human genomes. They found that around 98.7% of human ancestors were lost. The researchers say that the population crash matches with a gap in the fossil record. They say this could have led to a new hominin species that was a common ancestor of modern humans, or Homo sapiens, and Neanderthals (Picture: Getty) Senior author Dr Yi-Hsuan Pan, an evolutionary and functional genomicist at East China Normal University, said: 'The novel finding opens a new field in human evolution because it evokes many questions, such as the places where these individuals lived, how they overcame the catastrophic climate changes, and whether natural selection during the bottleneck has accelerated the evolution of the human brain' (Picture: Getty) The exact cause is unknown, but it is thought that the near-extinction has been blamed on Africa's climate getting much colder and drier. Dr Pan said: 'The novel finding opens a new field in human evolution by raising many new questions. 'Where did these individuals live? How did they overcome catastrophic climate change? And did natural selection during the bottleneck affect their evolution? All this remains to be answered' (Picture: Getty) It's fine to say 900,000 years ago, but in what period of human evolution did this happen? The researchers say that the signature of this bottleneck can be seen in the genetics of people with non-African heritage. Therefore, it would have been hundreds of thousands of years before humans migrated outside of Africa. The researchers estimated that there would have been an effective population size of around 1,280 individuals between 930,000 and 813,000 years ago. But, this doesn't mean this was the entire population, only this number successfully bred and passed on their genes to the next generation (Picture: Getty) The bottleneck also coincided with dramatic changes in climate during what's known as the mid-Pleistocene transition. At this time, glacial periods became longer and more intense, leading to a drop in temperature and very dry climatic conditions. However, the researchers also suggested that the control of fire, as well as the climate shifting to be more hospitable for human life, may have led to a later rapid population increase around 813,000 years ago (Picture: Getty)