Catalyst Volume 22 Issue 1

This issue of Catalyst includes the following articles:

Food Waste Recycling - Power from Potato Peelings

This article looks at how food waste can be treated by anaerobic digestion to produce methane and fertiliser.

Circadian Rhythms

Most organisms have some kind of 'body clock'; scientists are trying to show how genes are the basis of this.

Plant Responses

This article describes how plants respond to many different stimuli including light and gravity, but questions still remain to be answered.

The Sand beneath Your Feet

An article explaining why sand is a fascinating material to explore, and describes what it is made of.

Iron and Alzheimer’s - Studying Metals in the Brain

This article focuses on how X-rays produced by the Diamond synchrotron are used to discover the distribution of iron and other metals in the brain tissue of people who have suffered from Alzheimer's disease.

Bad Science - Patterns, Trends and Dastardly Traps

This article explains the way scientists work, how they conduct their research and look for patterns in data. It also investigates what can go wrong during the process of spotting patterns in the collated information.

Make Your Own Lava Lamp

This article describes how a lava lamp works and what is needed to make one at home.

Where Next?

This article introduces Tom Denbigh who describes how he has worked as a volunteer on scientific projects to gain experience before his degree course.

Volcanoes from Space

Using different wavelengths of radiation, spacecraft have helped scientists to understand more about volcanoes.

Catalyst is a science magazine for students aged 14-19 years. Annual subscriptions to print copies of the magazine can be purchased from Mindsets.