This Catalyst article describes how a crewed trip to Mars and back would be very demanding, both technologically and for the people involved.

This article is from Catalyst: Secondary Science Review 2011, Volume 22, Issue 2.

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This article focuses on the practical uses of the element Boron, including its pivotal role in heat conservation, energy conversion and storage....

This Catalyst article investigates how plants can be grown in orbiting spacecraft and how this may be useful in future manned space missions.

The article is from Catalyst: Secondary Science Review 2014, Volume 25, Issue 3.

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This Catalyst article looks at how humans are exposed to radiation from many different sources, including food. The article describes the doses of radiation from sources such as:

• building materials and rocks
• bananas
• bone scans
• cosmic rays
• radon gas

The...

Sustainability is a high priority for the London organising committee for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. This Catalyst article looks at their aim for all spectators to be able to get to the Olympic Park via public transport or by walking or cycling. In particular, the article focuses on the railway services...

This article investigates the Earth’s magnetic field and discusses, since it is weakening, if it could go into reverse?

The article is from Catalyst: Secondary Science Review 2015, Volume 26, Issue 1.

Catalyst is a science magazine for...

This Catalyst article explores gravitational waves which have been observed for the first time, a century after they were first predicted by Albert Einstein.

This article is from Catalyst: Secondary Science Review 2016, Volume 26, Issue 4.

This Catalyst article looks at the Higgs boson, a fundamental particle discovered by scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Geneva, on July 4th 2012, after it was first predicted almost 50 years earlier. The Higgs boson is predicted by the ‘Standard Model’, which makes up the set of fundamental...

This Catalyst article looks at the work of Robert Hooke, an employee of the Royal Society, Britain's oldest scientific society. His job was to present two or three different experiments each week to the assembled members of the society – and this was at a time when experimentation was new and there were no books of...

As the need to find alternative cleaner forms of energy increases, scientists are looking to technologies, such as Hydrogen Fuel Cells (HFCs), as a power source for transportation.

This Catalyst article explains how hydrogen and oxygen gas can be used in a redox reaction to produce electricity, and the...

This Catalyst article describes an experiment in which, using a microwave oven, water can be boiled in a cup made of ice, allowing all three states of water to be seen at once. The article explains what equipment needed to carry out the experiment, instructions, and a detailed explanation of why it works.

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A Catalyst article about road traffic accidents (RTAs). After the accident police and other investigators try to establish what went wrong. This may be with a view to prosecuting a motorist, or simply in an effort to improve road safety. An understanding of the physics of motion plays a large part in such...

A Catalyst article about the Kepler spacecraft, which is used to look for extra-solar planets. Scientists are hoping to shine light on the age old question of life’s existence elsewhere in the Universe using a new space-based telescope named Kepler. Launched on 6 March 2009, Kepler is searching the sky for small,...

A Catalyst article about physicists working at Europe’s Large Hadron Collider who hope to have received the first results from what is probably the biggest, most expensive and most ambitious scientific experiment ever carried out. Later, they hope to solve the mystery of the fundamental forces of nature.

The...

The STEM club from Holy Cross School in Chorley and the North West Local Centre of the Royal Meteorological Society collaborated on a project to launch a balloon into the atmosphere. The balloon was carrying a camera, a GPS transmitter and a radiosonde, an instrument which transmits measurements by radio waves back...