In some industries such as the spacecraft builders, the materials needed to build need to have the ability to absorb great heat and then cool off quickly. There is constant scientific research being done to improve upon the materials that already are available to us and new innovations being done to invent materials that do not yet exist.

In this simple experiment we are going to consider a few easy to find around the house materials and see how long they take to heat up and which one cools down the fastest. Here’s how to conduct the experiment.  Ask an adult to help you and get two solids that can be easily measured out such as baking flour and castor sugar.

Now use identical plastic bowls to measure out the same quantity of both flour and sugar. Place them both in the microwave and heat for a minute. Bring them out and use a cooking thermometer to measure the temperature of both materials. Write them down in your record book. Again heat up the materials in the microwave for another minute and repeat the process.

Once they have absorbed all the heat that they can and are not raising the temperature, leave the bowls out to cool. Measure the temperature after every two minutes to see which one returns to the original temperature first. That’s the one that cools faster in this science experiment. You can repeat the experiment with other materials as well.

NASA scientists must breath a sigh of relief at this science project resuming operations. After some days of not operating the Mars rover is back to work. The side B computers have taken over the working of the rover due to the side A computers having suffered a flash memory glitch. They will bring back the rover to partial operations.

While NASA is unsure what exactly caused the malfunction they are guessing it was probably due to an excess of radiation. The Curiosity rover was in the middle of analyzing its first samples of Mars rock it had gathered in January when the computer problems started. The process was to have been completed in second week March but the IT glitch stuck on 28th February.

It is part of Curiosity’s mission to discover if Mars ever had water available and also if the red planet is able to support life. Now the side A computers are likely to be used to back up the research which will be conducted by the side B computers. Needless to say the scientists are working hard to ensure that no other surprises affect the science research project. Fingers Crossed!May the Curiosity have no more problems.

Before you begin your science fair project make sure you have all the information that you need. Harnessing your full potential brain power involves you listening to the complete question before you begin to solve it. To crack any puzzle yo need all the clues, by not listening to the full question you are giving yourself a major disadvantage.

Mike Byster says that the human brain is so incredibly powerful. Sometimes, it may be a little too powerful. There are so many times where the mind figures out the answer to a question without actually stopping to read the whole question. So many decisions are made automatically without actually getting all the facts.

There is more than one kind of logic at play when you solve problems. When you practice divergent thinking based on different possibilities you are so much more likely to get things right. You have a powerful and some what troublesome tool in your brain, learn to use it to its full efficacy. This will happen when you see not just what you want to see, but also what is actually being shown. This is why observation and records play such an important part of any science fair project.

When you work on a science project trying to find a solution that no one else has come up with as yet, you need to think like no one else. By learning to think out of the box and not questioning the possibilities that you come up with, you can become a successful innovator. So how do you learn to think differently? One great way to practice logical and illogical thinking patterns is to solve brain teasers.

Take this one for instance – Angel’s mother had three girls. The first was called April. The second was called May. What was the third called? – If you follow the logical pattern you would say June because the names follow the months of the year. However that is wrong. The right answer is already included in the question. When you read it again you will realize that the right answer is Angel. Since the name was not part of the pattern the brain was misled for a short while. The way the question was framed made the difference.

Here’s another one –In West Virginia you cannot take a picture of a man with a wooden leg. Why not? -  When you hear the question you start thinking about a legal rule that forbids taking a picture of a man with a physical disability. Its only later that you realize that no one can take a picture with a wooden leg. You need a camera for that. Here’s an interesting science project, come up with five brain teasers and figure out how they puzzle the solver.

Every time a virus hits your computer system you feel exposed and vulnerable, but its nothing like what the scientists guiding Mars rover Curiosity from Earth are feeling right now. It seems that the computers on board the Curiosity rover have had to be put into “Safe Mode” to counter a computer glitch that they encountered.

NASA has had to call a halt to the research work which Curiosity was involved in because of a memory malfunction in the on board computer on the rover last week. They discovered the fault when the computer did not hit the daily sleep mode as planned and programmed into it. Thankfully the computer has a back up on board and the scientists switched to the back up computer while they are trying to solve the problem on the active one.

The back up computer will be reconfigured and the rover will move from Safe Mode to Operational Mode when that is finished, hopefully within a week. The remaining research projects will then be carried out. The NASA engineers on Earth will also continue to work on the science project involving the computer glitch in the main computer on the Mars rover to solve the problem of the flash memory being corrupted.