Saturday 26 April 2014

Ep 154: Blogging, podcasting, royal jelly and using chocolate to determine the speed of light



Over the Easter break, I spoke with Lish Fejer on ABC 666 Canberra on her Experimentarium segment. We spoke on various things to do with science blogging and podcasting, and matters Easter related including:
  • Royal Jelly (the Royals were in town, a great link if ever I've seen one),
  • Determining the speed of light using your microwave and left-over Easter chocolate.
To learn more about Royal Jelly, tune into Episode 137: Can your environment change your DNA in which I spoke at length with Professor Ryszard Maleszka from The Australian National University’s College of Medicine, Biology and Environment about the molecular differences in over 550 genes in the brains of worker and queen bees that are a result of the queen bee eating royal jelly at a young age.

On determining the speed of light using a microwave, see the post Instascience by Tom Gordon in which he uses paper. We used chocolate and it worked pretty well, albeit very messily. You will enjoy trying this at home, and failing just gives you another shot! Note in the broadcast I mentioned that the speed of light was 2.97 x 108 when it's actually 2.99792 x 108 (please forgive such a grievous error...)

Listen to this show here - the audio is courtesy ABC 666 Canberra:


Here is a nicely produced video on how to do this - I started out making one and made a mess of my kitchen.