Home, Health & Style

What is Counselling?

ids When something’s on your mind, it can help to talk about it and share it with someone else. But what if you don’t want to talk to your friends or family, or you can’t?
That’s where counselling can help.

Basically, counselling is just a space for you to look at your feelings. You do this with a trained counsellor who is experienced at working with young people. You don’t have to talk for the whole time – counsellors also use sand trays, drawing and modelling to help explore feelings. They won’t make you talk about something you don’t want to; it’s your time to use how you want. Even if your school has suggested you see a counsellor, you don’t have to – and you see them for as long as you want to.

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Home, Health & Style, Popular

A Controlling Friendship – A Bully By Another Name

Have you ever had a friend who made you feel bad? Maybe your friend was mean to you sometimes, and confused you. Or she (or he) would ignore you because you had done something wrong.
We all fall out with our friends on occasion, even us adults. It is a normal part of life.
When the friendship is one-sided then it is a different story. Then we might say it is a ‘controlling friendship’.

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Science, Nature and Tech

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

 

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Science, Nature and Tech

What is the Orionid Meteor Shower?

This October Earth will be passing through the tail of Halley’s comet, which will mean a shower of meteors flashing across the night sky. Our science editor Sam Gouldson explains.

What is Halley’s Comet?

A comet is a lump of rocky particles, ice and dust all bound together like a dirty snowball. When the comet nears a star, its surface transforms from a solid to a gas. The star’s light shines through these gases and makes them visible to observers as a fuzzy cloud around the comet’s centre, and a tail streaming out behind.

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