The story Synthetic life has gone mainstream. Since I wrote about Craig Venter’s work on creating synthetic cells this technology is now available to anyone with a lab so I guess it’s not surprising that companies are now making, and selling, ‘synthetic biology’ organisms.

The story I come across a lot of science news stories (as you can imagine) and  have noticed that journalists are attracted to certain topics – ones that they think have a certain ‘sexy’ appeal to their readers I imagine. Bionic body parts seems to be one of them – conjuring imagery of a future […]

Magician David Blaine has just completed this latest stunt – to stand on a platform for 72 hours whilst being ‘electrified’ by 1 million volts of electricity. This video would be good in any lesson on electricity as it demonstrates the use of a Faraday cage in an unusual context. You could show the start […]

As we are coming up to the end of the year I suspect that many of you might be on the lookout for some educational, but fun science lesson ideas. So, I have decided to highlight a few of the ideas that I have written about that might be of use:   Teaching science using […]

OK – so this did not really happen. It”s a PR stunt to mark the start of science month on the TV channel, Eden. However, the video does talk about what could happen if a real meteor of this size hit London, and it would be a lot more devastating than one crushed taxi.

The story As human population grows and pollution levels rise, our demand for clean water increases but its supply dwindles. How long will it be before our planet cannot provide its population with enough clean water to survive? Some would say that this is already happening.. Japanese design company, Takram, was asked to design a […]

This video shows an amazing new type of light show at a recent Coldplay concert. Each audience member is given a wristband containing LEDs. These are controlled centrally so they light up in time to the music – a trully interactive experience. Each wristband has a receiver, which allows data to be sent via radiowaves […]

The story I have been busy in the kitchen for the past few weeks trying to perfect the technique for growing edible sugar ‘diamonds’ and I think I’ve just about cracked it. This is so I can share an activity with you for your KS2 or KS3 science classes that is related to the Queen’s […]

This video from last week shows stuntman Gary Connery falling 2400 feet without a parachute and surviving to tell the tale. This would be a great story in a lesson on forces with any age student. The students could: Name the forces acting on him as he fell. Calculate his average speed by using time […]