1. There are five houses.
2. The Englishman lives in the red house.
3. The Spaniard owns the dog.
4. Coffee is drunk in the green house.
5. The Ukrainian drinks tea.
6. The green house is immediately to the right of the ivory house.
7. The Old Gold smoker owns snails.
8. Kools are smoked in the yellow house.
9. Milk is drunk in the middle house.
10. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
11. The man who smokes Chesterfields lives in the house next to the man with the fox.
12. Kools are smoked in a house next to the house where the horse is kept.
13. The Lucky Strike smoker drinks orange juice.
14. The Japanese smokes Parliaments.
15. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.

Now, who drinks water? Who owns the zebra?

A great lesson in the physics of sound can be had at all ages and stages by introducing the idea that to make a sound, something has to vibrate. Starting with twanging rubber bands and rulers, investigating the effect of changing tension and length, pupils can be set a great project to do at home – build your own diddley bo! A friend did this with her primary 5/6 class quite recently. Here are some of their instruments, and the master himself:

You can find more info on how to build your own over at One String Willie’s.

Click the image for more information © BBC

Post script: there’s a children’s version of this series called “Space Hoppers”. It is being shown, also on BBC2, starting on Tuesday 9 March at 7:30 in the morning. More information here.

Here’s a brand new opportunity to join the Institute of Physics – for free. If you’re a physics student aged 16 to 19 in school or college, you can now join the IoP for free and get access to these benefits:

• regular updates on what’s new in physics
• exam and university guidance
• information about careers from physics
• the chance to interact with other young physicists
• become part of the UK’s largest physics community

Just visit http://www.iop.org/16-19 to join.

The idea is to check that the chinmey isn’t blocked or leaking, so smoke is sent up the chimney to see if it’s OK, but before he does that, he uses sound:

Sound placed at base of chimney stack

What next? Then, he just nips up on the roof to listen to the sound. Muffled means there’s a blockage of some kind. Too clear down the other stacks and there’s a leak. Look at him go:

Up to the roof...

... to listen for leaks

After this, he lit a smoke stick at the base of the chimney to see it went where it was supposed to go, and didn’t, where it wasn’t. For once, something to be sniffed at.

Finally, one more trip up to the roof to give the flue a brush before cleaning up and calling the job done. Jimmy says I can go ahead and get my stove fitted.

Chim-chiminy, chim-chiminy, chim-chim-cheree, Good luck will rub off when you shakes hands with me!

You can also see this video at http://blip.tv/file/3186423.

The stunt is performed by a guy who claims to have invented a zero-friction material. If he’s right, all of the jumper’s gravitational potential energy at the top of the slope is turned into the kinetic energy of his motion at the end of the ramp. Make some assumptions and try to calculate the velocity vector of the jumper at the end of the ramp – compare your findings with the gravitational potential energy available and decide if it is at least theoretically possible to perform such a cunning stunt. If so, how much higher should the start point be, above the take-off point?

We have winners of the competition, prizes will be presented period 2 Friday in my lab, M211.