Editorial

In our last issue, Issue 16, we announced our partnership with the Royal Society. Now only a few months later, we are very pleased to present our first ever special issue which includes research done by schools sponsored by Royal Society Partnership Grants as well as an interview with Former President of the Royal Society, Martin Rees.
Although this research has been primarily carried out by secondary school children, we have three incredible pieces by primary school children which can be accessed by following the link or QR code in the journal. These include a video presented by the children themselves about earthquakes a, a presentation on making paints from plants and an experiment using a pendulum to kick tennis balls at a target. We are very proud of the fact that along with the Royal Society we are encouraging and helping these children to develop both the skills needed for the future and more importantly, a love of science.
Other than these, this issue sees a large variety of topics from all three main branches of science: physics, chemistry and biology. These range from Lockerbie Academy who looked at how car crashes are analysed and investigated to Redland Green School who used a Raspberry Pi computer to make a weather balloon, to a new selection of science in the news edited by Rachel Hyde. Many of these projects are still ‘work-in-progress’. We look forward to hearing how they shape up and will report back in a future issue.
In our modern world when so much plastic is thrown away, from milk bottles to empty take away cartons, it is very important to think about what will happen to them in the long term. Prior Park College has been doing this in their article, which compares the degradation of two different plastics. It is also very important to know what is in the products you use and so Dornoch Academy has been looking at the chemical makeup of shampoos and the essential oils contained within them using different chemical techniques.
Loreto College investigated plasma physics and its applications before running an experiment to find the ionisation energy of argon. Bordesley Green School set out to detect cosmic rays using a scintillation detector they had made as they were particularly interested in the effect of the atmosphere on cosmic rays and whether they could be related to lightning strikes.
Finally we have an array of biologically orientated articles. The first is an article about an on-going research project at Sir Roger Manwood’s School into algae. They argue that algae may be a significant contributor in helping to combat the world’s approaching food and fuel shortages and so they are searching for the optimum growth conditions to help accelerate this process.
We then have two articles about sport, both by Brompton Academy. The first investigates the effects of stretching and in particular which kind of stretching is better for you whereas the second compares different hydrating drinks and their effect on performance.
La Sainte Union looks at the problems facing Britain’s native horse chestnut trees and whether anything can be done to save them, Boroughbridge High School looks at the practicalities and effectiveness of using essential oils as antimicrobial agents and Liverpool Life Sciences UTC looks at introducing the Darkling beetle into schools as an example of omic science. Finally, The Misbourne investigates something that preys on every students mind – what does school actually do to your brain and how does it change
We hope you enjoy reading Issue 17 and will check out our website – ysjournal.com – for new articles, written by students from all over the world, published week by week. If you are interested in writing and publishing your own article or research, please visit our website or if you want to get involved with running the journal in any way, contact [email protected] ysjournal.com. For any other questions, email [email protected] ysjournal.com.
We invite all our readers to join us at our second conference in Canterbury, UK, on the 14th of October 2015 with speakers, workshops, discussions and poster presentations, check ysjournal.com for updates.