Latest News

Ever wondered why beehives are made of hexagons and not, say, pentagons? Grab a set of pattern blocks and start investigating to see which shapes can be laid next to each other in a pattern that competely fills a space and leaves no gaps. (If you don’t have a set of pattern blocks, here is a set of regular shapes you can copy and cut out.) You should find that regular triangles, squares and hexagons can all be used to do this. A repeating pattern that fills a space is called a ‘tessellation’. Tessellations can be found both in nature [...]

CSIRO Scientist Paulo de Souza is leading a world-wide effort to study the movements of bees. To do this, Paulo and his colleagues fit a tiny microchip to the back of the bee. The chip works like the E-tag on a car, gathering data about where, when, and how far the bee travels. This data can be uploaded to the cloud and available for scientists all around the world to analyse and gain a better understanding of how to protect bees from threats to their survival.

Imagine that you sit down for a healthy breakfast – some muesli and fruit, topped with some yoghurt and a drizzle of honey (of course). A cup of coffee on the side, perhaps. Now, lets re-imagine that breakfast if there were no bees in the world: No honey (of course), but also, no fruit, no coffee (that’s right, no coffee) and probably nothing left of your muesli except a few oats. Bees play a vital role in food production as ‘pollinators’. They carry pollen from one plant to another, which enables flowering plants to be fertilized and go on to [...]

‘Ground Up: Building Big Ideas, Together’ is the name of Scienceworks’ latest permanent exhibition for very young children. The space is designed to immerse 0-5 year olds in an imaginative world of sensory discovery and construction-play that will foster curiosity, encourage problem solving, and ignite a lifelong engagement with science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Entry is included with general admission to Scienceworks.

We don’t need to wait until children go to school to begin developing skills in STEM. Young children can be encouraged to do things such as observe the natural world, describe the features of objects, notice change, count things, compare sizes,  and consider where they are in relation to other things (spatial awareness) . Five things parents can do every day to help develop STEM skills from a young age

American Inventor Thomas Edison (pictured) is the person usually credited with inventing the incandescent light bulb. However, the real story is a little more complicated than that , with several English scientists developing early versions of the bulb that Edison produced. In fact, when Edison went to patent his bulb design in 1879, Englishman Joseph Swan, who had publicly demonstrated his bulb just one year earlier, sued Edison for patent infringement. Edison moved to also sue Swan, but instead of fighting it out in court, they formed the ‘Ediswan’ lighting company in 1883. This company went onto become the massive [...]

‘STEM’ is an acronym of the words Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. It also represents an approach to teaching these disciplines in an integrated way and not just as stand-alone subjects. STEM learning often takes place in the context of a problem-solving task or challenge where students are required to generate ideas, then design and build a solution that can be tested, evaluated and then refined if necessary. The focus on STEM reflects the identified need for STEM skills in the workforce of the future.  Enjoyable STEM experiences in the primary and early secondary years help students to confidently choose [...]

The Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra is the nation’s elite sports training centre. The very best athletes across a range of sports, including swimming, cycling and gymnastics are selected to come and train here. Tours operate daily, and include a visit to Sportex, a leading interactive sports exhibit set amongst a unique collection of Australian sporting memorabilia. More information

If allowed to grow for their whole lifetime, the length of someone’s hair would be about 725 kilometres There are about 40,000 bacteria in your mouth. The human heart pumps 182 million litres of blood during the average lifetime. 50,000 cells in your body died and were replaced by new ones while you were reading this sentence. Not only human beings, but also koalas have unique finger prints. More bizarre body facts