Your secret mission, Young Wildlifer, if you choose to accept it, is to find out how important fruiting trees are in maintaining bird diversity in cities and towns.

You will need:

• Binoculars (minimum 7 x 40)
• A bird book (we recommend The Book of Indian Birds by Salim Ali, Oxford University Press)
• A field notebook and a pen

A fifth grade student performed this experiment at an NCL outreach programme in a Pune school:

Common synthetic glues typically contain long, string-like molecules that dissolve in water. These molecules are polymers. When you add borax to the glue, the polymers crosslink. This means that they form chemical bonds so that the string-like molecules get knotted. If many such knots are made, interesting things happen. Like slime!

The strange ways in which Styrofoam behaves under pressure.

Years ago, when I was in college, I went out to sea on a sailing ship called the Westward. I was very seasick and spent most of my time throwing up overboard. Soon, I wisened up and figured that I had to throw up on the leeward side of the ship (where things get blown away from you) and not on the windward side (where everything hits you in the face!).