Cat’s Bats
Cat is 10 years old and has recently moved back from living abroad. She is settling into school in UK and learning to read and write in English (until now she was schooled in French, so it is a bit of a change). Her favourite animals are bats, and here she tells us a bit about them.
Living in History
Now you know what reenactment is, from Alison’s excellent article, you may want to know a bit more about how it all works. How much work is involved in sewing the clothes, what do they eat, how do they get around? Alison’s mother Jax has written a great article about all this and more
It wasn’t an easy life, living in Tudor times. You can find that out by reading about it in a variety of places.
But I found it out by living it at Kentwell Hall.
We do reenactment. We being our entire family, from my son who was a Tudor baby aged 4 months last summer, through to my partner Tim.
Winter Wonderings – Are Snowflakes Really All Different?
It’s a common belief that no two snowflakes are the same, and in a way this is true. No snowflake can ever be completely identical to another, because when you get down to the molecular level they will have slightly different kinds of water molecules, different electrons and different traces of other materials such as specks of dust.
However, if we’re talking only about the appearance and shape of a snowflake, then yes it is possible that some will have duplicates. Snow crystals can vary from fairly simple, hexagonal structures to the more complex and delicate shapes that we commonly think of as snowflakes.
The simple flakes have far fewer molecules than their larger cousins and so it’s entirely possible that you could find two that appeared identical when viewed through a microscope. The more complex structures, however, can have more than a hundred different features and each feature can form in a number of different ways. This makes it highly unlikely that you would ever find two large snowflakes that looked the same – but you could have fun trying!
For a more detailed explanation of the science behind the forming of snowflakes, check out this video
SCIENCE NEWS – Discovery of An Underground Ocean
Earth’s Underground Ocean
In 1864 the French author, Jules Verne, published his novel “Journey To The Interior of the Earth”. In this book 3 men explore volcanic tunnels that lead miles beneath the Earth’s surface, and have a number of strange encounters along the way. One of these is the discovery of a massive ocean, deep underground. Now, 150 years later, it seems that Monsieur Verne’s imagination may have been more accurate than he knew.
An enormous reservoir of water, roughly 3 times bigger than all of the Earth’s oceans put together, has been detected 400 miles below the surface. The water is trapped inside a layer of blue rock called ringwoodite, in the layer of hot rock between the Earth’s core and its surface) that is known as the mantle.