Ancestry.com is the most magical place. Because you have to pay to be on the site not many people talk about it but the money you pay goes to very good use; buying the rights to old censuses and records isn’t cheap. Continue reading ‘Ancestry’
Arniston Bay have a Text2Win promotion on their bottles of wine, with the prize being a weekend at a coastal hotel in the UK. I didn’t win, but the promotion has been well thought through with the losing message containing a link for a 2-4-1 hotel offer. This helps the consumer to feel positive about the brand even though they’ve lost.
Continue reading ‘Win a Weekend Break in the UK with Arniston Bay Wine’
It seems strange to see a postal prize draw in 2011, but this is what Honey Dew Beer has decided to do. I’m not entering but I’ll document it anyway. There are 500 bee houses to win and you have to send them your bottle top and neck collar. Very old-school.
Chicago Town Pizza has a promotion to win free music with every pack, tickets to X Factor and £10,000. To enter, find your unique code inside the pack and go to www.chicagotown.com/xfactor. Chicago Town is collecting your name, email, phone, age range and postal address.
Interestingly, everyone gets a guaranteed free music download but you have the option to give this up for a chance to win a free Chicago Town Takeaway Pizza. I decide to go through to the next round. I loved the mechanic, where the X Factor judges each voted for my prize. I didn’t get through but I was entered into the weekly ‘Live Ticket Draw’ to win 2 tickets to the X Factor show.
Special K has an on-pack prize draw to win nail polish from Nails Inc. To enter, go to www.specialkfoods.co.uk/nails with the unique code that you can find inside the pack. Special K is collecting your name, email, phone number and postal address. Only after you’ve supplied this will they let you enter your unique id.
Wrigley’s have a cute Prize Draw promotion to win £5 by entering a unique code at extratoothfairy.com. Wrigley’s are collecting your name, email, postal address and date of birth.
Don’t you find it amazing how everything you interact with is made of the same tiny building blocks? The computer you’re using, the coffee cup, the coffee! Yet each item has a different appearance and different properties, defined by the type of element or molecule involved.
The building block of chemistry, an atom is made up of three smaller components – protons, neutrons and electrons.
An atom consists of a ‘core’ known as a nucleus which contains the protons and neutrons. This is surrounded by a cloud of electrons which are attracted to the nucleus by electromagnetic forces. Protons and electrons are charged particles, with protons carrying a +1 charge and electrons carrying a -1 charge. In order for an atom to be neutral the number of protons and electrons must be equal. If the numbers of protons and electrons are not equal the atom carries either a positive or negative charge and becomes an ion.
An atom of carbon is shown in the periodic table like this:
6
C
12
The top number is the atomic number and the bottom number is the atomic mass. From these numbers we know how many protons, neutrons and electrons one atom of carbon contains.
The atomic number is the number of protons, and therefore the number of electrons; as all atoms are neutral so they must balance out. The atomic mass is the overall mass of the atom’s densely packed nucleus, in this case 12. So we can calculate the number of neutrons because we know there are only protons and neutrons in the nucleus and we know the atomic mass.
Therefore the number of neutrons is the atomic mass minus the atomic number, which for carbon is:
12 (atomic mass) – 6 ( number of protons) = 6 (number of neutrons)
The size of an atom varies depending upon the element. If you have a look at the periodic table you will see every element has a different atomic mass and a different atomic number. This means every element has a different number of electrons, protons and neutrons and that is the reason each element is unique.
Negatively charged electrons are constantly orbiting an atom’s positively charged nucleus, due to attraction between the charges. Electrons are arranged into ‘shells’, with each shell containing a certain number of electrons. The first shell around a nucleus can hold 2 electrons, the second shell can hold 8 electrons and so on. An atom is only happy when it has a complete shell, whether its the first shell with 2 electrons or the second shell with 8 electrons. For example, oxygen has an atomic number of 8. This means there are 8 electrons in every oxygen atom. 2 of these electrons live in the first shell, the other 6 live in the second shell. As the second shell needs 2 more electrons to be complete, oxygen is an ‘unhappy’ atom.
Water has probably the most well known chemical formula, H2O. This means it is made up of 2 atoms of hydrogen and 1 atom of oxygen. A hydrogen atom has only 1 electron and so needs 1 more electron to complete its first (outer) shell. By sharing one electron from each hydrogen atom with the oxygen atom the oxygen atom can complete its second (outer) shell and all the atoms become ‘happy’. However, as water is made up of more than one atom it is now called a molecule.
So now, every time you make a drink or take a shower you can amaze at how something so small can make such a difference to our everyday lives.
I picked up a bottle of Henry Westons 2010 Vintage Oak Aged Herefordshire Cider from Sainsburys as it had a neck collar promoting an Instant Win with a prize of a 5-day holiday to New York for 2 people.
Continue reading ‘Win a Holiday to New York with Westons Cider’
Coca-Cola is offering consumers the chance to win tickets for the 2012 Olympic Games in London. The code is etched into the bottle under the label and is almost impossible to read in low light, but once you find it, you can enter at cokezone.co.uk or by SMS. I chose SMS and texted my 12-digit code to 88555. Although the date for the daily and weekly draws had passed (they ended on 3 Oct 2011) I still received a text saying that I’d “been entered into today’s daily & the next weekly draws”. According to the T&Cs I’d actually been entered into the mop-up draw on 31 Jan 2012.
Mars has an Instant Win promotion to win a DVD on its packs of Maltesers, Mars Planets, Galaxy Minstrels, M&Ms, Revels, Milky Way Magic Stars and Galaxy Bites.
To enter you should first find the unique code. I had a pack of Minstrels and I had a lot of difficulty seeing the code inside the base of the pack as the contrast between the code and the pack is very small. Once you have the code, go to www.bagamillionmovies.co.uk and click on the ‘Enter Code’ button. You’ll then be asked to enter your date of birth before being allowed to enter your code.
I wasn’t asked for any other information before my code was processed, which is good for the consumer. I didn’t win, but I was then asked if I’d like to enter a Prize Draw to win an HDTV with Blu-ray player. For this, I was asked for my email address and phone number.