Princess Leia – The Warrior Princess
I love Star Wars. It’s my favourite trilogy of films ever. At least, I loved it when I was 8 and 9 and played Star Wars in the park wit my friends. I wasn’t overly fond of it when I was 6 years old and saw Empire Strikes Back for the first time. I still fast forward through the beginning bit of the movie where Luke Skywalker gets kidnapped by an abominable snowman on the planet Hoth and has to be rescued by Han Solo. It terrified me so much when I was 6 and saw it the cinema that my dad had to take me out.
Under the Sea with the RRS Discovery
Last month the The RRS Discovery, the most advanced research ship was launched in Southampton.
At £75 million it is one of the most expensive research ships ever commissioned. It measures at just over 100 metres long, with seven main laboratories and a bridge like the Starship Enterprise! It has just begun expeditions around the British Isles, currently examining the UK’s continental shelf, a band of sea floor around 50m-100m deep.
“These shelves are really very important,” says Dr Sanders from the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton. “There is a lot going on in the shelf seas and we need to understand how they work so we can safeguard their future.”
Great Women You Should Know… Hedy Lamar
You probably do not know who the actor Hedy Lamarr was as her last film credit was in 1958. If you ask your parents they may have a vague recollection or at least know her name.
What they probably don’t realize is that she wasn’t only an actor. She was a philosopher and, most importantly this month as we remember the World Wars and the sacrifices made during those wars, she was an inventor. She and avant-garde composer George Antheil worked together to create the first broad-spectrum frequency hopping wireless communications.
“What on earth is that?”, you’re probably thinking!
Water and Engineering – Water, Wonderful Life
