News & Politics

Women in Politics: Be The Change You Want To See

Recently the online parenting website Mumsnet ran a survey which found that people in politics are seen to be ‘white, middle-class and male’.  We think that ANYONE can become an MP, so we decided to chat to some politicians about diversity in politics.
First up, we wanted to know what it is really like for women in politics. We asked Tina to chat with Heidi Alexander, Labour Minister of Parliament for Lewisham-East in London.

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Events, Written By You

The Girlguide Girls’ Attitude Survey – Written By You

My name is Isla Whateley, I’m a 17-year-old Girlguiding member from Glasgow and a member of the charity’s youth panel Advocate. We discuss issues affecting girls and young women and look for ways to seek change.
 Every year, Girlguiding publishes research into the opinions of girls and young women in the UK, called the Girls’ Attitude Survey.  The findings from the latest report show that girls and young women are experiencing shocking levels of everyday sexism and discrimination at school, on the street and online.
 For example, 75 per cent of girls aged 11-12 say sexism affects most areas of their life, 87 per cent think women are judged more for looks than ability and one in five 7-11 year-olds say they have been on a diet.

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Home, Health & Style

Cool Bedroom Ideas for Kids

We’ve scoured the internet to find some fab rooms – not boys’ rooms and girls’ rooms, just really cool bedrooms ideas for kids.
Maybe you’ve grown out of your princess bedroom, or have gotten tired of your pirate room. Perhaps you didn’t have a real theme to begin with. We’ve gone for bedrooms that can be done without spending a ton of money – focusing quick fixes of a lick of paint and some new bed covers.

 

Stripes Galore! 

We love this stripy bedroom – you can learn how they did the stripes here 

 

bedrooms for kids

Room Makeover by Melissa Mondragon

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Science, Nature and Tech

A Kid-Friendly Explanation of The Big Bang & An Amazing New Discovery by Scientists

kid-friendly explanation of Big Bang

Most scientists believe that the Universe began in a Big Bang around 14 billion years ago. The entire Universe was inside a bubble thousands of times smaller than a pinhead, and was hotter and denser than anything we can imagine.

When the explosion called the Big Bang happened, the Universe as we know it was born. In a fraction of a second, the Universe grew from smaller than a single atom to larger than a galaxy. It kept on growing, and is still expanding today.

Now researchers in America think they have found traces left in the sky that prove this that the Big Bang did really happen. It takes the form of a distinctive twist in the oldest light detectable with telescopes. These twists of light are called ‘gravitational waves’ – the effect is a little bit like how waves form on the surface when you drop a big stone in a pond. However, you also have to imagine that the Big Bang formed the pond itself.

 

 

The team leading the project, known as BICEP2, has been using a telescope at the South Pole to make detailed observations of a small patch of sky. The aim was to find evidence of ‘inflation’ – the idea that the cosmos grew rapidly in its first trillionth, or trillionth of a trillionth of a second – growing from something unimaginably small to something about the size of a marble.

The leader of the team, Prof John Kovac of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said:

 

“This is opening a window on what we believe to be a new regime of physics – the physics of what happened in the first unbelievably tiny fraction of a second in the Universe.”

 

Over the coming years, scientists will work hard to investigate every aspect of this discovery. Other experiments will be carried out to see if they can replicate the findings of the American team. If this research is confirmed, it will be one of the greatest scientific discoveries of our time.

 

 
 
EDIT
 
Dr Sarah Bearchell drew our attention to this video, which explains the concept of gravity and gravitational waves with the help of a towel, an apple and a ping pong ball. Check it out
  

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