The Mr Science Show Podcasts on Are You Toxic

Ep 95: Merry Christmas from Mr Science!

The Mr Science Show

Reindeer and Santa Claus are the topic of this week's Mr Science Show. With Christmas here, we thought we'd look at some Christmas news, and this week we take a look at reindeer facts and the problems Santa is having at the North Pole. Due to global warming, and the global financial crisis, Santa has had to put his North Pole residence up for auction and is currently looking for a new place in Lap... read more

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Ep 95: Merry Christmas from Mr Science!

Tue December 30 2008

Reindeer and Santa Claus are the topic of this week's Mr Science Show. With Christmas here, we thought we'd look at some Christmas news, and this week... read more

Ep 94: The Geek Pop Virtual Music Festival

Sun December 21 2008

Geek Pop is the world’s only sci-pop festival - a free online music event featuring songs about science. The festival brings together science-in... read more

Ep 93: Communicating Mathematics with the Masses

Sun December 21 2008

Some people find mathematics perplexing, whilst others find it beautiful. This week on the podcast, I spoke to two young men professionally employed t... read more

Some people find mathematics perplexing, whilst others find it beautiful. This week on the podcast, I spoke to two young men professionally employed to communicate mathematics to school-children around the country. Both these guys have a long history in science communication - I got to be good friends with them back in my science circus days.Jamos McAlester travels Australia with Tenix Questacon Maths Squad, which is an outreach program of Questacon – The National Science and Technology Centre. The Maths Squad aims to inspire students and teachers about maths, and show how science and technology, and in particular maths, play an important role in our everyday lives. The Maths Squad also offers professional development workshops for teachers. Initially started in 1976, it has now visited thousands of towns across Australia, and there aren't too many places in Australia that Jamos hasn't been. The program makes almost 500 puzzle-based activities accessible to students and aims to highlight the broad and narrative nature of maths and its essential and pervasive range of applications. Jamos has a particular love of maths and thinks that people often find maths boring because it is taught out of context:"calculations are the spelling of maths, not the story."Marcus Finlay is a proactive, scientifically inclined, primary school teacher from Melbourne. As opposed to most teachers, Marcus inspires his students about science and maths rather than running away from the topics, and lists his class's attempts to build model tsunamis in the classroom as his science highlight of 2008. Back in 2001, Marcus and I wrote The Marco Show about a couple of wizards who sung songs and turned themselves in dogs - you can read about this ridiculous show on Mr Science from 2006.I spoke to Marcus and Jamos from The Mathematical Association of Victoria's annual conference, both were giving key-note addresses on the communication of mathematics.Listen to his podcast here:And remember to let us know your science highlight from 2008. You will go into the running for some sciencey prizes and we'll take a look at your highlights in a podcast episode in early 2009. See the form here. read less

Climate Change News and closing in on 100 episodes

Mon December 01 2008

This week on the podcast, we take a look at the latest climate change news, and start reflecting on the science year that was, as we close in on 100 p... read more

This week on the podcast, we take a look at the latest climate change news, and start reflecting on the science year that was, as we close in on 100 podcast episodes (this is episode 92).The news items we discuss this week are:CO2 build-up in the atmosphere may prevent a coming ice-age. Ice-ages occur roughly every 100,000 years and are possibly due to small shifts in Earth's orbit which change the amount of solar energy hitting the surface. A build-up of CO2 and its associated heating may warm the Earth so much that the next ice-age is skipped. Humanity has burnt about 300 gigatonnes of carbon from fossil fuels during its existence, and even if only 1000 gigatonnes are eventually burnt (from total reserves of about 4000) then it is likely that the next ice age will be skipped, whilst the next five could be skipped if all recoverable fossil fuels were burnt. For more information, see the story at ABC Science;The bouquet of wine reflects the amount of fossil-fuel derived CO2 in the air at the time and place of the growing of the grapes. Carbon-14, an isotope of carbon, is made when Nitrogen atoms high in the atmosphere absorb neutrons from space (cosmic rays) . Over time, Carbon-14 decays to Nitrogen-14 , and so fossil fuels, made millions of years ago from decaying organic matter, contain almost no Carbon-14. Therefore, when fossil fuels are burned, the resultant CO2 is almost Carbon-14 free. As CO2 is used by plants to grow, the amount of Carbon-14 in the atmosphere at the time of growing is reflected, in this case, in the wine's bouquet. A low level of Carbon-14 means there was a lot of fossil fuel generated CO2 in the atmosphere at the time of growing. More information on Discovery Science;Wind farms could steer storms. Future mega-wind farms for renewable energy generation could have a massive effect on the weather because the large wind speeds they generate could cause disrupted air-ripples that spread out like waves over massive areas. The waves could even steer storms on the other side of the globe. More information on Discovery Science;Tibetan glaciers are melting faster than ever seen before. The Himalayan glaciers are melting so fast that the usual techniques for dating glaciers can't be used. Glaciers can be dated by looking for traces of leftover radioactivity from US and Soviet atomic bomb tests in the 1950s and 1960s. In the Tibetan samples, there are no signs at all of these tests, and the exposed surface of the glacier dates to 1944. More information at ABC Science;If you are gazing at the sky this weekend (Thanksgiving to our American friends), then look to the sky to see Jupiter, Mars and the moon all gathered together.We also start reflecting on the year that was with my much better-half Eugenia, who had to put up with me recording this here little podcast, and then having to listen to the episodes and smile! Her highlights from the year?The no-brainer research that said in the UK you should wear thick-clothes, especially denim, to protect yourself from skin-cancer. We never saw the sun over the 2007 summer anyway...And on from this show, the Science of Sumo wrestlers - we employed the sumo diet on our recent travels.Listen to his podcast here: read less

Science on Stage

Wed November 19 2008

Dr Christopher Pettigrew, a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Biochemistry in University College Cork, is no stranger to putting science o... read more