South Africa has the highest rate of skin cancer in Africa and is second to Australia in the world skin cancer rates. The Human Alliance for Cancer Awareness (HACA) is working to create clubs in South African high schools to improve students’ knowledge and awareness of cancer.
The HACA team shares videos on the impact of cancer and engages the students in a quiz show about their knowledge of cancer.
Each attendee also receives a wristband with UV Beads from Steve Spangler Science. UV Beads contain pigments that change color when exposed to ultraviolet light. Ultraviolet (UV) light is invisible radiation that will give you a sunburn and injure your eyes. It is important to use sunglasses and sunscreens as they reflect UV photons.
The students in South Africa wear the beads to help them indicate their exposure to the sun. Dark-skinned Africans are less prone to sunburns but are in danger of getting skin cancer from sun exposure.
We love to hear from our customers to see how they are using our products in their classrooms and in their homes. Recently, we met a very interesting customer that doesn’t purchase our products for the usual educational purposes. He shoots pellets through them. Alan Sailer is an up and coming photographer with a unique angle.
Using a homemade flash, Alan takes high-speed photography of objects being blasted by pellets at his home in southern California.
He ordered our Water Jelly Cubes to photograph. The results are colorful and stunning.
Alan shares his photography on his Flickr account. Some have gone viral and have even caught the attention of Good Morning America and National Geographic. Several overseas publications have also displayed Alan’s work.
Alan has logged over 1.7 million views on his Flickr account and gives the money he earns from them to charity.
Alan says his flash is the key to his photography. He built it in 2008 and has been taking high-speed photos ever since. The flash is very fast – about one microsecond.
It’s St. Patrick’s Day eve. The day when children and adults alike put the finishing touches on their leprechaun traps.
Catching a leprechaun is tricky business. They are very sneaky and don’t play fair, so no one has ever caught a leprechaun.
Yet.
My boys and I build a leprechaun trap every year to try and catch these dastardly creatures.
In building a leprechaun trap, you need to start with bait. Lucky Charms cereal is always good, or gold pennies or gold water. Rainbows and anything shiny are also a good draw. Make sure your trap is rigged to come down fast on the little guys.
If you are lucky, the leprechaun will leave behind green snow or eggs or even worms. If you are off the charts lucky, you will have the little devil inside your trap come St. Patrick’s Day morning.
Earthquakes have been in the news a lot recently. It’s scary for children to watch the news and see the mass destruction, death and rubble caused by a quick shaking of the earth. From the damage in Haiti to Chile and most recently in Turkey, earthquakes occur across the globe.
The surface of the Earth is made up of many puzzle pieces, called tectonic plates. The pieces move and slide along each other all the time. The places where the plates meet are called plate boundaries. An earthquake happens when two plates slip past one another on one of these boundaries, also called a fault line. Most earthquakes occur along these fault lines.
The boundaries of the plates are rough and get stuck while the rest of the plate keeps moving, causing stress on the plate. Once the plate has moved too far, the stuck edges become unstuck along the fault and the boundary area moves suddenly, causing an earthquake.
The location directly above an earthquake is called an epicenter. The place below the earth’s crust where the earthquake actually starts
The Olympics may be over, but teachers and parents are still using the science behind the games to educate children.
Ice skating is a classic lesson in physics. When an ice skater spins, they are using angular momentum. In a spin, their arms act as weights. When arms are extended, the skater spins slowly. When the skater changes their moment of inertia and bring their arms into their body, they spin faster.
I brought this demonstration to Becky Ditchfield on the morning newscast. It’s my rule to never practice ahead of time with Becky. So, what you see on TV is the first time she’s ever seen the demo. I guess she’s sensitive to getting dizzy because she could barely read the teleprompter at the end of the segment. If I hadn’t of caught her, she would have spun into a half million dollar camera.
South Africa has the highest rate of skin cancer in Africa and is second to Australia in the world skin cancer rates. The Human Alliance for Cancer Awareness (HACA) is working to create clubs in South African high schools to improve students’ knowledge and awareness of cancer.
