News
Engineers in Sri Lanka have come up with a cheap but effective way to locate landmines - a mongoose tethered to a robot!
Landmines are a serious problem. The United Nations estimates that there are over 100 million of them lurking in ground, worldwide. At the moment they are killing or ...
If raindrops on roses are some of your favourite things, then here is some news for you. A study has come out this week that reveals why it is that drops of water cling to rose petals in that most beautiful of ways.Lots of flowers and leaves are covered in spines and a layer of wax which repel water...
The claim that we learn from our mistakes would appear to be wrong, according to a new study from Canada.McMaster University researchers Karin Humphreys and Amy Warriner, writing in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, have found that the worst thing to do when you experience a word on ...
We know that many reptiles like crocodiles can choose the sex of their offspring by controlling the temperature their eggs are incubated at. And now it has been revealed that human mothers might also have some influence on whether they have a girl or a boy, not by controlling temperature but by whet...
Kitchen Science
Make some strange crystals on a piece of string with things you would find at home.
QotW
When will the worlds oil reserves run dry?
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Interviews
Just what is so special about gemstones? We spoke to Ian Mercer of the Gemological Association...
How can we be sure that when we buy jewellery it is the real deal? To find out, Meera went to pay a visit to the diamond specialists at De Beers.
You may have heard of using diamonds to cut glass or harden drill bits, but lasers? Scalpels? Chris Wort joins us from Element 6, who make synthetic diamonds for a huge range of industrial uses...
Questions

Can robots smell out landmines?
Probably you could but you need to rely on some kind of electronic nose, these e-noses. I don’t know how good our technology is at the moment with sniffing these things out with something that’s portable and cheap. The benefit of combining a simple robot with a well trained Mongoose is that it’s very low-cost and it is quite disposable. If you blow up a very expensive equipment obviously there’s a greater cost to that.

Do chimpanzees have to trim their toenails?
Chris: I don’t know, Helen, do you know this?
Helen: I don’t know actually, it’s a good question. I can only imagine they do. I can imagine that they can chew them, they’re quite bendy. They can probably chew their toenails. But we can find out. Anyone got any ideas?
Chris: If you have any clues, do get in touch.

How do geodes form?
We put this question to Ian Mercer:
Well, we were talking about volcanoes earlier. Now, if you think of a volcano after it erupted and all this black lava comes out and it starts cooling down then, as it cools, some of the gases start fizzing out. They form big bubbles and those bubbles gradually fill with more minerals as the water flows it cools the lava. These minerals line the side of what was the bubble and because the lava very often turns to a sort of soil and wears away you’re left with this hard mass which was the lining of the bubble. Some of those when they’re broken open you find that they’re lined with these beautiful crystals, quite often amethyst which is purple quartz.

Are there precious stones in Edinburgh?
We put this question to Ian Mercer:
Edinburgh actually is partly built on, or the castle is certainly built on, the remains of a volcano. Actually it’s a basalt volcano. Yes, you can get gems in basalt but if you search all the basalt around the world looking for gems you’ll only find gems in relatively few, relatively speaking. Before you try to seek permission to dig up Edinburgh I’d think about the geology first.
Chris: There’s probably better things to find in Edinburgh like whiskey, for example!

What is tanzanite and where is tanzanite found?
We put this question to Ian Mercer:
The short answer is yes, that is true. Tanzanite is a really beautiful gemstone. It’s a gem variety called zoisite which really occurs as a sort of powdery crust – greeny blue and brownish colours. Certainly not gem quality. That place in Tanzania is the only place in the world where quantities of gem quality zoisite form.
Chris: Chemically what is it?
Ian: It’s another of these silicates. It’s a pretty complex silicate in fact. We won’t go into the formula because it would take longer than a minute. It’s an orthorhombic silicate. One of its attributes is that it changes colour as you turn the stone around. It’s what’s called dichroic. It’s treated in order to improve that blue colour as with most gem stones.

What is iolite and where is iolite found?
We put this question to Ian Mercer:
This is an interesting stone. This forms at very high pressure. This isn’t a volcanic stone, this is a gemstone that forms as a mineral in rocks that are squeezed in between something. This is a stone which is intensely dichroic. It changes colour completely as you turn it round.
Chris: Where do you find it?Ian: That comes form all sorts of places like Norway and Africa. Anywhere where deep-seated rocks are pushed up towards the surface.
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