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 […]

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 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 […]

Image: Jon Candy @Flickr The story The flame that will burn during the London Olympic Games was lit at Olympia, the birthplace of the Ancient Olympics, last Thursday. The torch is lit using the same method as it was at the ancient Olympic Games, a parabolic mirror.

The story There is no doubt that the gold medals for the London Olympic games are beautiful but how much gold is actually in them? This is might well be the first of a few Olympic themed postings over the coming months. I wanted to come up with some ideas that were a bit different and unusual so […]

The story Fracking is a controversial way of mining for natural gas reserves that are buried deep underground in layers of rock. It is been banned in some countries but is being carried out in the USA and UK. A few weeks ago the scheme got the green light to be extended in the UK.

A simple starter I often used when introducing the topic of light with year 8 was to give them a problem to solve: