Catalyst Volume 23 Issue 1

This issue of Catalyst includes the following articles:

"I Am the Greatest"

 This article discusses the science behind motivation in sport. Psychologists are developing theories to explain how athletes' thinking can help their performance.

Curious About Mars

This article looks at NASA's Mars Curiosity rover, the automated chemistry lab which landed safely on Mars in August 2012.

Clam Shells, Climate Change and Ageing

his article looks at the discovery of the Arctica Islandica, a mollusc which carries a record of past environments in the banding of its shell.

Seeing the Atoms That Will Shape Our Future

As transistors become smaller, the doping of semi-conductors becomes a significant challenge. This article looks at how Scanning Tunnelling Microscopes can be used to manipulate individual atoms, to create electronic devices of unprecedented accuracy.

Cum Grano Salis

This article looks at salt, in particular the process of extracting salt from the sea in the salt factories of Trapani in Sicily. It also looks at the structure of salt, how it is used as a preservative in food, and how the wildlife and vegetation surrounding the saline ponds have adapted.

Seeing Into Bacteria

This article describes how biophysics is helping in the search for novel antibiotics.

ALICE: Extraordinary Nuclear Adventures Underground

This article discusses how experiments using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which discovered the Higgs boson, at the CERN laboratory can tell us about the nature of matter in the early universe. ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) is one of the experiments taking place at the LHC.

Higgs Boson

This article looks at the Higgs boson, a fundamental particle discovered by scientists at CERN on July 4th 2012, after it was first predicted almost 50 years earlier.

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