Hey Blog! The weekend before last, I was attending an archaeological dig with the Scouts, this time as a Young Leader, and the Saturday before that, I participated in another dig with my Young Archaeologists’ Club, so those are what I’m going to talk about today!

I have, in the past, told you about archaeology, so I will only do a brief recap. Look for previous posts on this subject if you want more. Basically, archaeology is the study of things left by people in the past – THINGS PEOPLE PAST is the general chorus at the beginning of every Scouts dig. Trenches are sections of a site which you carefully dig up by scraping back the soil with the straight edge of your trowel. In your trench you may find finds, which are small, portable discoveries like clay pipes, coins, or pottery shards. You may also find structural evidence, such as walls, post holes, or charcoal from burning. Now on to the digs I did.

The YAC dig was at Castleton again, but not on the same site as last year. We were looking for an early mill, pre-1700s and possibly connected with the mediaeval hospice which was situated a couple of fields away. The geophysical survey shows a filled-in mill-lade, at an odd alignment to the 1700s mill and perfectly aligned to an older building, which the experts guess is both the cottage mentioned in a document where it says a lead-miner family lived and a totally undiscovered mill. The chance it might be connected with the Hospice of Blessed Mary in the Peak is what drew the archaeologists, because it is that site they have been looking for.

The dig was interesting; I found a few small bits of pot and a lot of mud and tree roots. The walls of the supposed mill had already been found, so we didn’t do much in that context, which is why I was digging in the ditch for the mill stream, and then a little bit at the upper end of the building. Our session was only one and a half hours long, so we didn’t get as much as we would have if we had stayed the entire day. Still, the background for the dig was intriguing, and I hope they find their mill over the next couple of weeks the dig is on!

The second dig was only two days long, but I was there for all of it. This dig was at Willersley Scout Campsite, which is slap bang on top of the ruins of a ‘Georgian’ country house. It was demolished in the 1950s; blown up with gelignite – it took them five tries to flatten it completely! And even then, it wasn’t fully successful, as you will hear. A few years after demolition, the Scout Association acquired the site, and it is now a neat, flat, grassy area, perfect for camping on. Few campers realise they are sleeping on top of a Tudor manor house, a Georgian manor house, and possibly an earlier house as well!

The weekend’s activities consisted of Dig, where the trench was; Detecting, where the metal finds were found with a metal detector; Geophys, where you could have a go at “electrocuting the ground” as the scouts called it, to find features under the soil; Finds, where dating and cataloguing went on; and Investigation, where you could research the history of the site. I was helping as a Young Leader with the dig, so I didn’t take part in the other activities, but was talking to the younger ones and telling them what counts as a find and what to do with it (put it in the finds tray if it could be interesting; if it’s a plain old rock, ignore it!).

The dig was amazing. On day one, we found the front wall, and part of the facing slabs. I found a pipe stem – c. 1700s – and was assisting the County Lead Volunteer for Scouts when he found a rare and significant shard of Tudor Green Glaze pot – c. late 1400s. By the end of the day, the doorway was clear, and we could determine by the size of the bricks in the wall that they were all Tudor! It was clear this was more than a Georgian stately home; there must be a Tudor house which had been renovated by the addition of a façade about 300 years after it had originally been built. On day two, we extended the trench and found even more – the slabs around the entrance, where roman-esque pillars would have been added as part of the façade, much more pot (mostly 17- and 1800s, but with a few shards of Midlands Purple Ware from the 16- to 1700s too), a multitude of nails, loads of slate flakes off the roof, and about 50 modern tent pegs from metal detecting across the site!

The last task of the dig was to fill in the trench – but we have agreed that what we found is too much for just a single two-day excavation, and we will have to go back sometime – so we put down a layer of plastic to show where we got to, which will help us start quickly in our next dig.

In all, both sites are interesting, and I hope to return and do some more archaeology very soon, so I’ve got my trowel kept at the ready!

Hey Blog! Three Saturdays ago, I attended the annual Humanatees Notaprom, so that’s what I’m writing about in this post!

My tutor Jake runs Humanatees (i.e. he teaches the humanities subjects, but spells it like manatees) and once a year, he invites his GCSE and iGCSE students to an evening get-together. It’s not a traditional school prom, but is a chance for all the students to meet each other and have a fun night out. I have been keeping you updated about my studying and exams over the past year, and this is the party at the end. I had got to know one person very well online, and was looking forward to meeting her and the other people from the class, as well as those who had done other courses. Jake has several hundred students, and I don’t know how he manages them all, but many live overseas, so there were thankfully less than a hundred at the Notaprom.

The dress code was “crocks and socks, fancy frocks, shirt and tie or tie dye; anything goes!” – so I decided I would wear my waistcoat. Then I realised that if I wanted to be able to take my phone, I needed an extra pocket of the right size in the right place. Therefore, I designed, embroidered, and hand sewed my own pocket on the inside of the left front panel of the waistcoat; this took a while, so I will need to rewatch whichever Sewing Bee episode it is in which you are shown how to make welt pockets before I make my next waistcoat! Still, it worked. One person brought a large quantity of flat caps like the one Jake wears for every lesson, and was distributing them at the Notaprom, so by the end of the evening I had acquired one of them too!

From the beginning of the evening till the food had arrived and the pizza bar was open was a couple of hours, so a lot of conversation, balloon games and table tennis took up the first half; then after pizza and chips, a lot more talking, many, many laughs and a spot of dancing. This was my first time dancing. It’s most enjoyable, for anyone who hasn’t tried. Another student had written a new song along the lines of an old tune, especially for the evening, so there was a little karaoke session where everyone danced to the spoof song “Just Jake”. We had so much fun over the evening, and I don’t think I’ll forget it. I made some new friends too, so I’m looking forward to seeing them again next year or sooner than that. It’s a pity there isn’t something like it every month, but Jake would probably go mad if he had to organise it so regularly! We all had a great time at the Notaprom, and I will most certainly be going next year!

Hey Blog! This post is all about running.

Mum and I have recently completed Couch to 5K, the running programme where from never running you can run for 30 minutes. It starts small – from 60 seconds of running and 90 seconds of walking, repeated 8 times – to 30 minutes of running and no walking. We didn’t think we could do it when we started – or at least, we’d need to redo a few weeks when we got to 20 minutes of running in one go. However, we decided to trust the programme – and we did it!

One problem with doing anything by foot, bike or any other form of non-motorised transport in Derbyshire is that there is almost never a flat spot. There is one hill after another hill after another hill, so it’s difficult to run without feeling exhausted in the first five minutes. Luckily, not far from us is the Cromford Canal; and canal boats don’t like hills any more than runners – so canals are generally quite flat. This is therefore where we run, and as we have got faster and run for longer, we have got further along it. From just to the first bridge being a long way about four weeks ago, to nearly halfway to the next village this last week!

I decided a while ago that I wasn’t feeling fit enough. This is most likely just delusion and that I a. can’t quite keep up with friends with longer legs who are 16, b. I had started comparing to adult stamina and c. I was reminiscing about all those long walks back in lockdown. However, I certainly wanted to see how good I was exactly and make myself better that that. If something is bad, wrong, poor quality, etc. then I need to be/make it better (or at least that’s the idea). Mum also wanted to get more exercise – so the running plan was born!

A few facts: running is a very complex process involving moving multiple muscles in the legs in sequence. Muscle pairs help with this – one relaxes while the other contracts, pulling the limb one way, then they switch to pull the limb the other. Now imagine that around your ankle, knee and hip, on both legs, and then realise you do all that instinctively. Then look at your breathing; this gets faster as you run, because of an increase in the energy your body needs and therefore an increase in the amount of respiration required. The balanced equation for respiration is: C₆H₁₂O₆ + 6O₂ = 6CO₂ + 6H₂O (glucose + oxygen = carbon dioxide + water), and this is one of the most important formulae in all biology. However, this takes time to produce the energy required, and uses a lot of oxygen, so your breathing becomes faster to get more oxygen in. Simultaneously, a faster, albeit lower-power reaction starts, to get smaller amounts of energy quicker. This produces lactic acid and energy, which builds up in your muscles and can hurt. The good news is that the lactic acid undergoes a second reaction which restores it to CO₂ and H₂O again. All well.

We noticed a marked improvement in our running capabilities; I started off sprinting rather than jogging, so I was exhausted and not feeling at all well when we finished the first few runs. As time went on, I ran slower but was less tired. In the final few weeks, when we were running for 20 minutes, then 25, then 28, and finally 30, we got faster and faster, and further and further. But this improvement is not the end of the story. Even if you run for 30 minutes three times in one week, you won’t be fit at the end of the year. If you do this every week, however, you will – much happier, healthier, faster, stronger, and tireless. Which is where I leave you – I will need to keep running, three times a week, for 30 minutes – 90 minutes a week, 360 minutes a month, and over 4000 minutes a year. That’s a lot of running!

Hey Blog! Goodness, finally all that election malarky is over and we can get back to the “new normal” (i.e. the new government). Covid phrase, I know. Ah, the (good?) old days! But the problem is I can’t choose who steps in at Number 10, as I’m only 14. But there is some good-ish news at the end, so keep reading.

If you live in another country, or on another planet (hiya alien readers!) you probably haven’t had an election today. You might well have had/are going to have one this year, as there are a lot of countries deciding who should lead them currently. However, if you don’t know much you may be wondering why we even need all this speeches, campaigning, over-four-pieces-of-paper-from-one-party-in-one-day-through-the-door, and what the fuss is about which person gets let in through the ministerial front door. Well, it all started back in Greece with a few pieces of pottery and a bunch of male citizens of a city called Athens (or at least, that was the first major democracy).

Athens decided that every adult male who was of local lineage and a free man (in short, a ‘citizen’) should have a say in what the country did. Whenever a decision, from minor ones like who owned which field, to major ones like should they attack Sparta (they did), needed making, all citizens would decide what to do by putting a piece of pottery in a particular pot. These pots were then counted out, and the pot with the more pottery shards in would be the pot of the decision which was made. Bingo – the first ballot, ballot box, and direct democracy! The idea spread to other parts of the ancient world, including Rome: before the emperors, the Roman Republic was a type of democracy, but not identical to Greece. This seems a good point to explain how Roman democracy was different. You may have heard the terms “plebian” and “patrician”. The plebs were the common people, the patricians were the wealthy ones. A system of checks and balances made sure that while the Consuls who the patricians in the Senate elected could make new laws, the Senate had to pass them, and Tribunes from the plebians could veto anything from above. The most important difference between Greece and Rome was the former, a ‘direct democracy’ was ruled by all the eligible citizens, whereas Rome was a form of ‘representative democracy’, where chosen people made the decisions, but the general population chose those people – complicated, eh?

The current British parliament is slightly different again. Citizens choose representatives, who campaign for seats in parliament. Most (not all) representatives and wannabe representatives (candidates) belong to parties, who are groups of people broadly in the same area on the political spectrum and who support each other (mostly). Some parties are large – e.g. in the election just passed, Labour won a whopping 2/3 of the seats available; and some are small – last parliamentary term, the Greens had only 1 representative in parliament. Independents are candidates who do not support and are not backed by any party, and the Speaker of the House (the person who all Members of Parliament address and who chairs debates) is a post kept strictly apart from any party so the Speaker does not favour any party more than others. The party with the most seats in the House becomes Government; the next largest the Opposition. The leader of the Government becomes Prime Minister, the Head of Government, as opposed to    the King who is the Head of State. The two offices once used to be the same, but over time democracy reduced the powers of the monarch even as the power of the people went up.

One interesting thing to note about the UK is that it has a ‘first past the post’ system, or a plurality; where the person with the greatest number of votes wins the seat. This is true even if it is 1 more than the next highest, and you don’t need over 50% of the vote. Majority systems are where winning candidates must get over 50% to win, or else the candidate with the lowest number of votes is knocked out (metaphorically!) before going on to the next round. There is yet another kind of representation – proportional representation (PR), where the share of votes is exactly shared with the number of seats as a whole. This both makes sense and doesn’t at the same time – it would be difficult to achieve, but would prevent a result where a party with a low vote share can win most of the seats due to other parties squabbling (example: one party has 32%, another has 27%, a third has 26% and one has 15% – the 32% wins 100% power in plurality, but only 32% of power in PR). This is what just happened with Labour taking over – even though it got a smaller vote share than it did when it when it lost the election a decade ago, it has taken nearly 2/3 of the seats and been called a “landslide” win. This is a result of the system.

Who would I have voted for? Well, that’s a secret. Ballots are designed to be secret, so that no one need know who you voted for unless you tell someone. But judging how the country has been run for the last few years… The good news is that unless a snap election is called before February 2028, I will have a say in the next one. Which does unfortunately make me kind of responsible for whichever leader becomes PM – unfortunately that is if it’s a bad one! Still, I have four more years to think about who I’ll be voting for – or to decide if I want to stand as a candidate! Watch out in years to come, and don’t forget to vote for meeeeeee!

Hey Blog! Two Fridays ago, I went to the Big Bang Fair in Birmingham; and last Friday we went to the National Stone Centre, so that’s what this post is about!

The Big Bang Fair is a yearly gathering of scientists, teachers, innovators and other people involved with STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths). It is run in the NEC at Birmingham, and attracts visitors and stallholders from across the nation. We have looked at going to it before, but have never actually gone. This year, we decided to go with a couple of friends who we took part in the Midlands Makers Challenge with. We took the train down to Birmingham International, and then walked into the NEC and found Hall 12, where the event was stationed. After quickly getting a coffee and checking we were ready, we walked in and presented our tickets, where we got a returnable lanyard to certify we were permitted to wander around the fair.

There are a lot of stalls at the BBF. Some are about developing new technologies – I was interested especially by one showing how superconductor magnets can be used to help transport and a different stall showing how they can be used to generate green energy via nuclear fusion. Some are about how we can combat climate change. Others still show medical developments and analysis of your body – one showed you whether you were still growing by ultrasound-scanning your wrist (I am still growing 🙂 !). I went around quite a few, but unfortunately I couldn’t see them all as there was not enough time available to see everything. It was all very interesting and I learned a few new facts and ideas on how to do things.

Last Friday, I went to the National Stone Centre to visit the Mary Anning exhibition. Mary Anning was the first influential female fossil hunter, whose work, it is said, inspired some parts of Charles Darwin’s On The Origin Of Species. She found some of the first ichthyosaurs and pterosaurs, (ichthio saurus fish-lizard and ptero saurus wing-lizard), many ammonites, and other fossils from the Jurassic Coast in Devon. Living on low pay from the fossils she sold, and unable to attend any scientific institutions to learn more and put her views across because of the systemic sexism of the day, she is still remembered as an important early female palaeontologist. We’d be much more appreciative of her today! While the exhibition was rather small, it did include a few things I hadn’t known about her – e.g. she was almost struck by lightning as a baby!

The two days out were different, but both gave me a bit more information on our world, both the history of palaeontology and the future of technology. What a good rhyming sentence to end on!

Hey Blog! On Saturday, I had a stall at a sale, so I’ll be telling you about that today!

A few weeks ago, I explained about my wood turning. I told you what I have created and that I would possibly be running a stall at a sale this year. Since then, I have taken part in a class called the £5 Challenge. This is where you are given a fiver by your parents when they sign you up, then you build a business with this £5. People in the class did everything from baking to jewellery, and I chose to do my wood turning. With the £5 and another £6 I had made through an early sale of four mice at a lower rate, I had £11 to work with. Because the wood from the log store is free, the chisels were borrowed, the stain and varnish we had in the garage and I could use them as I liked (responsibly!), I had no expenses and thus could use the money to pay for a stall, as and when I ran one.

Last Saturday, I did just that! Dolly’s Fabrics in Heage (not actually run by someone called Dolly, in case you were wondering) was having a courtyard sale for local makers to come and sell their wares, and I decided to participate. I spent the two days before the sale mostly down in the garage making more and more mice, sanding them, staining them, varnishing them, and then carrying them up to the house for eyes, ears, tails, and mouths. I also made coasters featuring Heage Windmill using a pyrography tool, also known as a wood burner tool. Pyro – fire, graph – writing, so pyrography literally means fire writing! I was finished just in time on Friday night, and had 20 mice and 14 coasters ready and waiting for the morning.

Luckily, tables were quite cheap at only £5. I have known them to be £15 or more at other events. With the money I had from the starting investment, I paid for the stall and simply waited for the customers to arrive. This is what made it so fun. You get to make fun things in the garage, then talk to a bunch of people while they give you money! Over the sale, I sold nine mice and four coasters, and made a whopping £42! (This is impressive only as it was my first sale; if you talked to a multibillionaire, this would be pocket money or less than, but for me, it’s quite a lot). I plan to save most of this, perhaps spend some on materials and another stall so that I can multiply this cash. After that, I don’t quite know. I might even become one of those multibillionaires!

Hey Blog! This week is a book review, and it is by a classic author I’ve never read before but really like!

Thomas Hardy, novelist, was a 19^th century author and poet, famous for romantic novels, stunning word-created imagery, and in-depth characters depicting the contrast between rural life and wealthy life. He is very much a writer of his time, yet speaks across time and can be understood today and beyond. The book I am reviewing is called Under the Greenwood Tree, an early work of his, exploring first time love, among other things, and much influenced by Shakespeare, even in the title – ‘Under the Greenwood Tree’ is a song sung by the forest court of the deposed Duke Senior in As You Like It, which I studied recently. But enough of Shakespeare, more of Hardy!

The story takes place in a Wessex village, and is introduced by the arrival of the quire, or choir; the village and church band. One member is the protagonist, Dick Dewy, the son of the local tranter, or general carter. If you are daunted by the unusual and forgotten words, don’t stop here but continue on as they will get easier to understand. There is a party thrown, and during the course of the evening Dick becomes enamoured with the village schoolmistress, the beautiful and highly sought after Fancy Day. Seemingly either ignorant of or unconcerned by the sudden adoration from Dick, Fancy continues with life, but Dick tries several long-winded and complicated ways to woo her, culminating in a direct conversation during a drive in a cart. However, what the outcome of this conversation is I will leave you to find out, as it would be no use me telling you the full story!

It is unlike almost anything I have ready before. It is a romance novel, and while some books I have read have touched on this, it has never been the full focus, only a side quest for the main character or someone else’s obsession. It is set in an area I have not read anything else set in – indeed, it is set in Hardy’s own birthplace under the different name of Mellstock rather than Stinsford. The language is very unusual for modern times – Hardy “deplored the dying of old dialects” according to my copy. Finally, Hardy is a classic author who I’ve never read, which is exceedingly unusual, and therefore the nuances of language particular to Hardy are unknown to me. However, I like it! It is a fun and friendly book, serious and comedic, and I’m eager to read more from Hardy.

Hey Blog! I’m back again. It’s just past the end of May, and as always, we have been doing No Mow May, or rather Too Lazy And Crazy To Mow All The Daisys, or whatever you want to call it. We like the garden messy and natural, but generally cut the grass in March and again in September, to get rid of the dead stuff and let the lawn grow. However, over the Summer, we leave it long (unless perhaps we have visitors coming to stay…).

We generally get a “crop” of Dandelions once in April and again in June; and while this is of some annoyance to the neighbours who have pristine gardens with no weeds that dare grow and perfectly planted flower beds, we love it! You may be interested to know that dandelions are named from the French Dent-de-lion, lion’s tooth, for the shape of the leaves. The real French name is Pisenlit, which when you know that lit is bed and en is in, reminds you of the laxative properties of this plant! There are a few clover plants that grow in the lawn, an endless summer attraction as you get to search for hours on end to find a four-leafed clover. I never have, as yet. In the former rockery, now an overgrown slope where primroses and wild strawberries fight for dominance and the right to show their flowers, we have the aforementioned flora, as well as several sapling birch trees, a large green bush which never bears fruit and we should probably remove in favour of a berry bush for winter birds. The Home Ed Shed takes up a portion of the garden, but even on the flint chippings we have three neat planters where vegetables might or might not grow, and a very large and heavy pot containing a rowan tree given me by Grandad, which is nearly as tall as I am and expected to grow even taller by the end of the summer. At the top end, there is a pond containing tadpoles from at least four clumps of frogspawn, surrounded by pea gravel and both natural plants and introduced native flowers. What was the area of bark chips when we moved in is now a large veg bed and an extraordinarily overgrown wild space, the one deliberate addition of which is a pine tree which for a few years was the Christmas Tree – before we moved on to mediaeval decoration and had holly and ivy branches up in bunches instead. At the final corner of the garden is Mum and Dad’s shed, with all the tools in, and the compost bins. As you can see, we have a “variety of habitat”!

However, there are a few flowers which we have not planted and have come into the garden later. There are five which are particularly beautiful, and these are they, in turn.

Flower number 1. The Orchid

This beautiful flower appeared last year in the lawn, underneath the bird table. It has long, pointed, spotty leaves, and a cone of flowers on the single stalk. The flowers are pinky-purple, and have three shallow lobes on the bottom part and a curving one on the top part. We think it could be a Common Spotted Orchid, but as they can easily hybridize with very similar species like the Northern, Southern or Early Marsh Orchid it is hard to tell for sure. It could even be an Early Purple Orchid. As the flower itself has not appeared yet this year, the picture is of the leaves.

Fun fact – ding ding – orchids rely on mycelium for vital nutrients; they cannot grow from seed without this symbiotic partner.

Flower number 2. Fox-and-cubs

This member of the dandelion family resembles its common cousin, but has a smaller flower head with squarer ends to the petals, and a thin hairy stem rather than the smooth, hollow stem of the dandelion. It is bright orange, and has several flowers on one stalk. The first flower to open, the largest and at the top, is the “fox” and all the smaller ones underneath it are the “cubs” – which is how they got their name.

Flower number 3. Cuckoo flower/Milkmaids/Lady’s-smock

This is a pale pink to creamy white flower, standing upright in the lawn, and has multiplied rapidly since we discovered it growing a few years back. It’s pretty to have in the garden, and is growing all over the place!

Flower number 4. Yellow Pimpernel

This relative of Scarlet Pimpernel looks almost identical except in colour, with small flowers on low-growing stalks which just brighten up the entire area. It has bright yellow flowers on pointed green leaves, and is a beautiful flower to cover the corner of the garden near the vole holes and around the pond.

Flower number 5. Granny’s Bonnet/Columbine

This flower migrated from next door, coming through the hedge and currently flowering all along the low wall where the small mammals live. It has blue-purple flowers on branching stems, which do vaguely resemble an old-fashioned lady’s hat. Flowers can be different coloured, especially as garden escapes. A quaint flower to decorate the garden border outside the window!

If you want to identify and learn about different flowers, I recommend Harrap’s Wild Flowers by Simon Harrap. This book is, in the words of Chris Pakham (nice job on Springwatch, by the way!) “an essential, concise, comprehensive yet accessible guid to our flora”  – and it certainly is just that!

Hey Blog! Yesterday I sat an exam of a kind I’ve never done before, but have been studying for for nearly a year. I actually sat the Environmental Management exam I have told you so much about, so here is how it went.

In How to Manage the Environment, 19^th Feb 2024, I told you about the course, and the impending exam. I said last week that I had both papers upcoming. I have now done the first of these, the In Theory paper. This is as opposed to the second, In Practice paper, which is a case study. I have never done a GCSE or equivalent before, and as this was an IGCSE it was my first go at anything of the like. There are a dozen or so rules, some of which are very specific, which prevent people cheating. For instance, no phones, watches, note-inscribed handkerchiefs, opaque water bottles or anything that could be used as information to help you pass are allowed. Personally, I think the easiest way to cheat would be to write notes on your hand with ultraviolet ink and then take a UV torch in with you to check the notes, as they do not ask you if you are carrying UV torches. However, as I didn’t want to cheat the system, but be happy that I had done well without cheating, I did not use this method.

The papers are locked away in “paper jail” for a year after the exam, so they can be used as mocks by schools for the year after the first sitting. Therefore, it’s best if I don’t tell you what was contained. I can, however, say that there were two units from the textbook with no associated questions in the paper, which gives a good chance of them being key topics in paper 2; and that it was relatively doable. Hopefully the mark scheme will not be stupid like one of the past papers I’ve done; that mark scheme gave barely anything for sensible answers and what they wanted was not the same as what the question implied.

I was finished about five minutes early, which gave me time to check through the paper properly rather than being finished in a mad dash at the end which is what I have done for almost every mock. This is good as it means I can both make some educated guesses about the next paper and relax during the process of writing the answers. I came out of the building first (closely followed by everyone else except for those with extra time) and had an enormous smile on my face. I think it went well, and am hoping (as always!) for an A*. I think I’ll probably do quite well.

I have paper 2 not next week but the week after, so wish me luck! I’ll get the results in July/August, and be sure to tell you what I got then. In the meantime, I have to go and revise so see you next week!

Hey Blog! I’m so sorry it’s been so long since I was doing weekly posts, life has got in the way and I wasn’t up to speed. I hope that even with my Environmental Management IGCSE Paper 1 Exam next week and Paper 2 Exam two weeks after, I will remain on top of my workload and continue posting. However, this post is about a natural phenomenon I saw last week for the first time – it’s the Northern Lights, the Aurora Borialis!

The Northern Lights are not to be confused with The Northern Lights by Philip Pulman, which I reviewed last year. The book says they are where the world is thin, made so by the solar wind, so you can see parallel universes. The scientists never mention the ability to see these other worlds, and though I looked, I couldn’t see any. Ah well. Still, they are amazing, with brightly coloured green, purple, and occasionally reddish, yellowish, and blueish lights covering the sky. They can be seen from space, from Earth, and they even occur on other planets. But why are they here in the first place?

Apparently, they aren’t light shining off the armour of the Valkyrie warriors coming to pick up Viking dead; spirits being taken to heaven; people engaged in a battle in the sky; a premonition of the French Monarchy being overthrown; foxes brushing mountains with their tales; or the fires of a deity; but instead a storm of solar wind. It occurs when a discharge of plasma through the Sun’s coronal holes draws some of the Sun’s magnetic field with it; this portion of solar wind (the continual plasma ejection which shines out of the Sun) amplified by the magnetic field around it then collides with our own magnetic field, Earth’s magnetosphere, the shield around Earth which protects us from solar radiation. The particles of plasma are deflected away from Earth, which makes the magnetosphere into a teardrop-like shape, but there is one small hole where solar particles can enter – a point where the magnetic field doesn’t ring around the Earth but flies outwards (look at a diagram of the force lines on a magnet), too far away to shield us – the poles! Particles are channelled down through the sky towards our poles, not poles in the ground like Pooh though, but rather magnetic poles. As the energy-rich particles hit our atmosphere, they ‘excite’ oxygen and nitrogen in the air; the electrons of these gases go into a higher orbit (a ‘hiccup’ one of my science teachers called it!) and as they come back down, they release the excess energy as light.

The light is coloured according to the gas, oxygen being most commonly green, and nitrogen being most commonly purple. The other colours are less common, but do occasionally show. A strong solar storm like the one just passed, which showed lights far south, only happens about once every 22 years, when the sun’s magnetic field ejects a large storm of charged particles – so watch out in 22 years for another showing of the northern lights!

All you need to make an aurora are:

• a magnetic field
• a stream of plasma
• and an atmosphere!

So, time for HEIAS Q&A:

• Why don’t we see it when we look at a magnet? We don’t have a plasma stream! (To all those people who have plasma cutters out there, I would love to come and put a magnet in your machine and see what happens!).
• How does it affect the poles? The equator gets hot, the poles do not, but you’ve just told me it only happens at the poles. The magnetic field only repels particles, not waves. Heat and light are electromagnetic radiation waves, not particles (although they’re also photon particles, really confusing and I do not understand them, but then no one does!). Particles are funnelled to the poles, whereas waves are not interfered with and so hit the equator.
• Could the magnetic shield be used to combat climate change? No, it only repels particles, not heat, and climate change is a change in heat. Awesome story idea though – Magnetic Protection, a climate change story!
• Would it occur if you held a lightsaber near a magnet? It depends. Some sources say lightsabers are made of plasma and therefore it would, yet some say they aren’t plasma swords but laser swords and therefore it wouldn’t. You haven’t got a lightsaber to test it on, have you?!

On Friday I managed to see the lights for the first time ever – it was the first time for Mum and Dad too, and they have been alive for a lot longer than I have! I was up till 10 hoping to see them, and then jumped out of bed at 11 to the news that they were very bright in the back garden! The lights shining over the shed was magnificent, green and purple and stripy across the sky; it was worth the late night even if I did sleep in in the morning! Picture quality was awful, so I can’t show you what they looked like, but the best description is a watercolour on the sky that never stayed in the same place for five minutes, constantly fading and reappearing, but so slowly you would never have known it had changed if you hadn’t looked away! I hope to see them again one day.