Astronaut Tim Peake travelled to the International Space Station in 2015 and spent 186 days orbiting the Earth and has shared some tales from this epic adventure with Whizz Pop Bang magazine in this brilliant blog post: Tim Peake spills the beans on life in space!
He’s also just published his first children’s book, along with bestselling author Steve Cole, based on space-age science and technology: Swarm Rising. We’ve got SIX COPIES to give away!
When Danny is kidnapped by Adi – who can run through brick walls and make cars drive on water – he realises that all humans are in danger. Adi is part of a super-advanced hive mind, the Swarm, which intends to protect the Earth from the environmental catastrophe caused by the human race.
Adi – Alien Digital Intelligence in the form of a girl – can bend the laws of physics and control digital data, but as a digital being she wants to know what it’s like to be human. Which is where Danny comes in.
But what exactly is the ‘help’ the secretive Swarm is offering? Can Danny and his friend Jamila help Adi stop the Swarm Agents and give humanity a second chance?
Tim Peake spent 186 days on the International Space Station between 15 December 2015 and 18 June 2016 and has shared some of his amazing experiences with Whizz Pop Bang magazine. He’s also just published his first children’s book, along with bestselling author Steve Cole, based on space-age science and technology: Swarm Rising. Find out how you could win a copy here!
European Space Agency astronaut, Tim Peake.
How did you feel when you were preparing to go into space?
“I had so many feelings! On the one hand, there was a huge amount of excitement and adrenaline. The trip was a culmination of years of work and effort, so I was really looking forward to it. I was a little bit apprehensive as well – obviously there’s a rocket launch to go through, and then all eyes are on you. The eyes of the agency, the eyes of your crew mates, the eyes of the nation watching! There are times when you just have to step up to the plate and perform.
Catching a visiting cargo vehicle is a one-person job: it is your responsibility to connect an entire space station to an entire cargo vehicle, and nobody else can help with that. These tasks are very, very high-pressure!
I felt that pressure – as sports people do when they have to perform – when I went out on the space walk. So I was definitely apprehensive, but the majority of my feelings were excitement and adrenaline. Being up there on the space station is such a privilege and everyone supports you to try and be the best that you can be.”
What’s it like looking at Earth from space?
“I just loved looking down at Kamchatka on the east coast of Russia, for example, and seeing a volcano smoking away. I’d think, ‘Nobody but me knows that volcano is erupting,’ because there literally are no humans within 2000 square miles of that location. It’s just wonderful that you can visualise the entire planet having been around it about 3000 times.
There’s nowhere on Earth that I don’t know now. Although clearly, I haven’t visited every country, I’ve got a different perspective of the planet.
It’s very serene in space. It’s a beautiful environment to be in; weightlessness, to be floating, to be looking down, just gracefully passing over the Earth without any noise, no vibration. It’s a beautiful, beautiful feeling.”
Did you look out for aliens!?
“Absolutely! The funny thing about looking out away from Earth is that in the daytime, you just see the blackness of space. It’s a very strange black – the blackest black you’ll ever see. Here on Earth we never really see black like this, because there’s always ambient light around.
In space – wow! You feel like you’re falling into the void when you look out at the blackness of space. And of course, there are no stars because the Sun is so bright that it blinds out the light of the other stars. You can only see this black abyss.
At night, when we are in the Earth’s shadow, all the stars come out. It’s beautiful to look the other direction: you can see 100 billion stars making up the Milky Way with no light pollution. The interesting thing is, you can’t see other satellites which you can see clearly from Earth – I look up at the night sky here, and I’m always seeing satellites going overhead. But in space, because we’re travelling so fast, it’s very, very hard to see another satellite that’s also travelling very fast with the naked eye. So we don’t see lights coming towards us in space.”
What’s bedtime like in space?
“Sleeping in weightlessness is lovely once you get used to it. It’s a bit tough to begin with, because your body doesn’t know to go to sleep. Here on Earth, every day of our lives we lie down at bedtime, rest our heads on pillows, and these actions are such strong triggers to make us fall asleep. When you don’t have those triggers, you float around all day, you float into your crew quarter, you zip up a sleeping bag, you can switch off the lights, you can put in some earplugs in but your body says, ‘What now?’ Once you get used to it and your body can fall asleep, wow, it’s a lovely sleep. There are no pressure points, no tossing and turning, no restlessness and you wake up completely relaxed.
We only need six hours’ sleep maximum on the space station because the quality of sleep is so good.
I used to like to strap my sleeping bag loosely using tie wraps, just enough to allow me to float around a little bit – not so much that I’d bang my head on the roof, but enough to enjoy that floating experience.”
How do you eat on the ISS?
“You get very unpopular with your crew mates if you open a packet of crisps or something like that!
Crumbs go everywhere, even in people’s eyes, all week long – so we try and avoid that.
I had bags of pistachio nuts, already shelled, but they were a treat that were sent up in care packages every now and again. You just had to be careful about how you eat that kind of thing. But yes, you don’t really want to have crumbs in the space station!”
For fans of Alex Rider, Young Bond and Cherub, this exciting action-adventure is the first children’s book from astronaut Tim Peake and bestselling author Steve Cole, and is based on space-age science and technology.
When Danny is kidnapped by Adi – who can run through brick walls and make cars drive on water – he realises that all humans are in danger. Adi is part of a super-advanced hive mind, the Swarm, which intends to protect the Earth from the environmental catastrophe caused by the human race.
Adi – Alien Digital Intelligence in the form of a girl – can bend the laws of physics and control digital data, but as a digital being she wants to know what it’s like to be human. Which is where Danny comes in.
But what exactly is the ‘help’ the secretive Swarm is offering? Can Danny and his friend Jamila help Adi stop the Swarm Agents and give humanity a second chance?
Our very knowledgeable robot, Y, has another challenge for you this week. Y’s Wonder Club club is for budding scientists to share their adventures in science with our robot, Y, and other Whizz Pop Bang readers. All Whizz Pop Bang subscribers are automatically joined to Y’s Wonder Club and for a limited time this summer we’re opening up the club for everyone!
We have two weeks left so get ready for your scientist in training to put their capes on and become an Eco Hero! If you missed our previous weeks, go back and have a look at the Wildlife Watcher and Super Scientist badges to collect them all! We’ve got some great summer holiday activities that not only keep the kids entertained but do good for the planet too!
Complete these three challenges to earn your Whizz Pop Bang Eco Hero badge…
1) Upcycle something
Choose an item that’s reaching the end of its life or is destined for the bin and transform it into something useful. For example, you could make a pencil case from an old bag, tie-die a stained t-shirt or freshen up an old wooden stool with bright paints.
2) Make an environmentally friendly change
Make a lifestyle change that enables you or your family to cause less harm to the environment. Perhaps you could ask your parents if you could walk, cycle or scoot into school or to the park, instead of driving. Maybe you could reduce the amount of single-use plastics you use at home, eat less meat, or help your family to reduce your food waste.
3) Help to raise awareness
Spread the word about an environmental issue that you feel strongly about. You could design and put up a poster about an environmental issue, e.g. reminding your school friends to bring in reusable water bottles or encouraging awareness in your neighbourhood of toads or hedgehogs on the roads. You could write to your MP or your local shops or cafes to ask them to make environmentally friendly changes. Or maybe you could join an environmental campaign or protest.
Here’s how to apply for your badge:
1. Download the Eco Hero application form. Print it out and complete the first page of the application form to tell us about how you’ve helped the environment. Attach any photos or drawings that you’d like to send to us. If you don’t have a printer, you can type your answers into an email or write your answers on a plain piece of paper and send us a photograph of it.
2. Ask your parent or guardian to pay the £1-per-badge postage and packing fee, which can be done online at whizzpopbang.com/shop/719619/badge-postage-and-packing/. Add the order confirmation number to the second page of the application form.
3. Ask your parent or guardian to fill in the second page of the form.
4. Photograph or scan your completed form and any other documents and email them to Y@whizzpopbang.com with the subject line as ‘Eco Hero Badge’. Alternatively, post your completed application to Eco Hero Badge, Whizz Pop Bang, Unit 7, Global Business Park, 14 Wilkinson Road, Cirencester, GL7 1YZ. Please note that it can take up to 12 weeks for delivery of the badges.
In Whizz Pop Bang: Robots Rock, we ran a competition to win a Picoh robot from Ohbot, and we’re so excited to be able to announce the winners! Read on to find out who won, and to read the brilliant robot jokes and science jokes they coded Picoh to read as their competition entries!
Picoh is a smart little robot that can speak, look around and interact with you when you connect it to a computer. Its LED matrix eyes can blink and change shape. It can smile and frown and it has lights and sound in its shoulders. Whatever Picoh does is all up to your programming skill!
Whizz Pop Bang readers were challenged to code Picoh to tell a joke or say what you love about science, and here are our winning entries! Each one wins their own programmable Picoh robot from ohbot.co.uk. Well done to Sophie, Toby and Ella – watch their winning wisecracks being told by Picoh in the videos below…
Joke by Sophie
How much does it cost a pirate to get his ears pierced? A buck an ear!
Joke by Toby
What do you call a scientific dinosaur? A testasaurus!
Joke by Ella
Why did the robot fail his exam? Because he was a bit rusty!
Today is International Friendship Day and we’re celebrating a friendship that led to some super-important scientific developments!
Find out more in Whizz Pop Bang: CODING CAPERS
The amazing Ada Lovelace was born in London in 1815, and loved maths and poetry from a young age. When she was a teenager, she met a mathematician and inventor called Charles Babbage. Charles was fed up of doing long calculations by hand, so he invented a machine that could do sums for him. He called it the Difference Engine. Ada was really interested in the Difference Engine. She was inspired to study maths harder than ever before, and she and Charles became good friends.
Charles later invented a machine, called the Analytical Engine, that could do ANY calculations by following a series of steps – but it was so complicated that he found it hard to explain to other people how it would work!
Ada came to the rescue. She was so good at maths that she understood the machine and was able to explain it to other people. Ada wrote a code that turned a real-life maths problem into a list of instructions that the machine could understand. This was the world’s first algorithm (computer code).
She and Charles made a great team! Sadly, Ada died before she could actually help Charles to get the machine made, but the discovery that machines could follow instructions led to the amazing computers that we all use so much today.
It’s not long until the fantastic Just So Festival kicks off – it’s running at Rode Hall, Cheshire on 20th – 22nd August. It’s an incredible outdoor adventure for families from bumps to great grandparents, and Whizz Pop Bang are so excited to be a part of the fun that’s in store!
Photo: Teneight
The Whizz Pop Bang team will be popping in to run an out-of-this-world Mission to Mars workshop, where interplanetary explorers-in-training will get to explore one of our closest neighbours in space. Come along and look for signs of life, extract Martian core samples and experience the seven minutes of terror faced by spacecraft preparing to land on this fascinating planet!
Find out more about the festival at justsofestival.org.uk, where the line up has been announced! Discover a celestial celebration of the planets in The Observatory, live bands and dance workshops on the Footlights Stage, stories galore in the Spellbound Forest, and so much enchanted adventure throughout the site. There’s something for every member of the family!
Photo: Samuel Mills Photography
Whizz Pop Bang is an awesomely amazing monthly science magazine that brings science to life for children aged six to twelve (and their parents too)! There’s lab-loads of hands-on experiments, mind-boggling facts, puzzles, news and fun packed into each month’s magazine. Whizz Pop Bang sparks imaginations and inspires the scientists of the future from the moment it comes bursting through their letterbox. Subscribe today at whizzpopbang.com!
If you’re not lucky enough to be going to Just So Festival this year, but want to learn more about the red planet, you can pick up Whizz Pop Bang: MISSION TO MARS in our shop now!
Are you teaching the topic ‘Living things and habitats’ in Year 2?
As part of the sequence of lessons in your medium-term plan, you’ve probably arranged for your class to go on a hunt for some minibeasts. This is a really fun and engaging activity, but once the children find the bugs, can they tell you what they are? Do they know which minibeasts are insects?
Learning to identify insects
We have an excellent lesson plan that you can use before the children go on their bug hunt. It will help children learn how to identify insects from other creepy-crawlies, which is an important skill to learn in preparation for classifying animals in Year 4. The downloadable lesson pack includes a lesson plan that links to the National Curriculum and gives ideas for previous and future learning.
Insect lesson plan Year 2
The PowerPoint presentation explains how to identify an insect.
One slide from the PowerPoint presentation included in the lesson pack
Make sock insects!
Your class can then apply their newly acquired knowledge by making fun sock insects! This project requires no sewing, upcycles old socks and it’s perfect for both visual and kinesthetic learners. They each just need to make sure that their cuddly insect has three body parts (a head, thorax and abdomen), as well as six legs. They could also add wings and antennae if they like.
To help with the lesson, we have included detailed images of some insects. These clearly show the body parts to help children to identify the things they must include on their sock insect. To support your less able learners, we’ve included a visual set of instructions that can be followed with help from your teaching assistant.
To stretch your top scientists, there’s a spot-the-odd-one-out activity. A rogue creepy-crawly has found its way onto the page with the other insects. The challenge is to find the minibeast that isn’t an insect, and then use one of the insects as a model for their sock toy. It’s important that throughout the lesson you talk about how to identify whether a bug is an insect. By the end of the lesson, the children should be able to identify that an earwig is an insect, but a woodlouse or a spider is not.
Create an insect display
Once the children have made their sock insects, you could create a fabulous display of them in your classroom. If you would like pupils to revisit their learning, ask them to create labels for each part of the insect and then add those to the display, or alternatively take photographs and pop them in their science books for evidence of the lesson. Make sure you share your photos with us too! Use the hashtag @whizzpopbangmag or post them to our Teacher Facebook Group – join here
For your next lesson, the children can go out and find minibeasts, but unlike when they did this activity in Reception or Year 1, this time they will have the knowledge to identify the insects.
Make insect collectors
Here are some instructions on how to make pooters. You can use these to collect insects safely and humanely, observe them, and then release the insects back into their habitats. Download these instructions for FREE
To help consolidate pupils’ learning, why not introduce some insect-themed reading into your English sessions? Download our fascinating reading comprehension about ants. Since it’s for Year 2, the text and questions have been differentiated for different abilities.
Year 2 Non-chronological report on ants
Whizz Pop Bang magazine and teaching resources are brilliant ways to enhance your school’s science teaching:
We provide downloadable science lesson plans, PowerPoint presentations, hands-on investigations and science reading comprehensions written by primary school teachers.
Whizz Pop Bang teaching resources link to the National Curriculum, ensuring correct coverage.
All of our resources are year group specific, ensuring progression between the years.
We make cross-curricular links to other subjects, such as English, Maths, History, Geography, Art, Design and Technology and PSHE.
Prices from as little as £190 per year for a copy of Whizz Pop Bang magazine through the post each month and whole-school access to our ever-growing library of downloadable teaching resources, with unlimited teacher logins.
We’ve also just launched a new individual membership option so teachers and home educators can access all of our amazing downloadable resources for just £20 for the whole year. https://www.whizzpopbang.com/schools/#subscribe
“Using Whizz Pop Bang school resources has enabled investigations to be an integral part of my science planning. I now have investigations and experiments throughout my planning rather than just at the end. The lessons are easy to resource and the pack has everything I need to teach the lesson so it saves me time as well!” Louise Hampson, Year 3 teacher
Darren had so many brilliant stories to share that we couldn’t fit them all in the issue, so here’s some more from the man who digs in poo to find dung beetles…
“I’ve been obsessed with insects since I was at junior school.”
In my early teens, I joined the Amateur Entomologist’s Society and through their magazine I learnt lots of new things and that there were even more books on insects! Remember, this is before the internet existed. Through this group I bought a secondhand copy of A Coleopterists’ Handbook’ – an entire book on beetles, including how to find them, and this became my instruction manual for the next few years and what got me interested in beetles.
A dung beetle in some dung! Photo: Darren Mann
“The first time I went through the entire process of collecting, preserving, and identifying specimens on my own, I felt a real sense of achievement.”
I went out again, and again, and, well you get the picture. I spent hours searching dung, finding beetles, and because I did it so much, I got quite good at finding and identifying them. I became the Warwickshire county recorder for dung beetles and their allies and found some quite rare ones, including a few species not discovered in the county before. The excitement of getting a first county record has never worn off and it is always a privilege to be the first person to find something new.
“I’ve now worked at the Oxford Museum of Natural History for over 20 years”
My favourite space is the Westwood Room, named after the first professor of Zoology at Oxford – John O. Westwood. It has an open fireplace carved with a hawkmoth and stag beetle life cycle, hanging above is a portrait of the great beetle hunter, the Reverend Canon Fowler, and it housed the British Insect collection, including all the dung beetles.
“I’m currently working on a project moving over a million British insects into a new space”
One of the museum’s major projects, supported through The National Lottery Heritage Fund is HOPE for the Future which aims to move all the British insects out of the Westwood Room and into new storerooms in shiny new pest proof cabinets. The room will then be refurbished to accommodate teaching, workshops, exhibitions and maybe even some bug handling sessions. The first stage in any large project is applying for funding, you need money to employ people and buy stuff. We spent many hours working on the application, discussing logistics, costings, and delivery plans. With over a million British insects, we needed extra help. Training and working with volunteers is an important part of my role. For this project, there was a team of twelve volunteers, counting and cataloguing the insect collection – this took quite a long time due to the sheer number of insects involved.
“I dream of going dung beetling in medieval Britain!”
Many of our insects were collected by famous entomologists from places that I have also visited. It gives you a sense of connection to the Victorian bug hunters and sometimes a little beetle envy creeps in, as many of their old haunts have been lost or the species is now almost extinct in the UK. If there is ever a time machine built, I want to go dung beetling in medieval Britain, searching the dung of the extinct Aurochs and visit Deal sandhills with Commander JJ Walker before it was developed into a golf course.
“I also give tours at the museum”
Another aspect of my job is public engagement, talking to people about the Museum and the collections, giving behind the scenes tours and hosting visitors and researchers. I can generally manage to slip in a dung beetle anecdote or two. I get requests for help with insect identification, sometimes a blurry photograph in an e-mail, sometimes a dead ‘thing’ in a jar left at the front desk. These can be challenging, but always fun and sometimes surprising. One person contacted me with a picture of a European rhinoceros beetle found in their garden moth trap. This 5cm long beetle was probably imported with plants from Italy to the local garden centre and flew a few hundred metres to their garden. If our climate gets warmer, one day it may become established like so many other introduced insects.
Darren at work. Photo: Darren Mann
“If you want to become an entomologist, enthusiasm is so important.”
You could join clubs and societies that are relevant to your interests. It helps you meet with likeminded people, gives you access to a magazine and website full of the latest news and articles, and shows prospective employers that you are dedicated to your subject, especially if you have been a member for a long time.
I have read hundreds of application forms and interviewed lots of people. Those that make it to my short list are there because their interest and enthusiasm shines through. Applying for jobs can be quite nerve wracking but never over embellish your CV or exaggerate claims at interview. If you don’t know the answer, say so and then make an educated guess. You are more likely to earn respect by being honest and showing you can apply some lateral thinking or problem-solving skills.
Robot surgeons allow surgeons to perform complex operations with more precision. Robot surgeons allow surgeons to perform complex operations with more precision. A real surgeon operates the robotic arms from a console.
The gymnast of the robot world, MIT’s mini cheetah robot can execute a perfect 360° backflip! It can also walk the right way up or upside down and tackle bumpy terrain twice as fast as the average person’s walking speed.
