Do you know why falcons attack from the side? If you do you could be a high-flier in our online science competition in which you can win an iPad2. Why not play our "<a href="http://www.epfl.ae/competition">Do You Know …</a>", which was created by the Swiss university <a href="http://www.epfl.ae/" target="_blank" title="Visit the EPFL's website">Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL)</a>, and running on www.thenational.ae and in its Frontiers section in The National. There is new question each Sunday, prompting readers to discover how much they know about the UAE and its culture from a scientific perspective. Michael Mitchell, who developed the competition, said the questions were harder than they might seem but the idea of the competition was all about promoting research and learning. For example last week the competition asked at what temperature water boils at the UAE's highest part? <a href="/deployedfiles/thenational/Sound and Vision/PDFs and others/frontiers_day3.pdf" inlink="vgnextoid::35f67c2a7d658310VgnVCM100000e56411acSTFL&ilsf::1" title="Learn more">The answer was 94c</a>. Readers have a week to answer each question before the correct answer is published the following Sunday, together with a new question. Entry for this week's question closes at midnight Sunday, when entry for the following week's question begins. Each <a href="http://www.epfl.ae/competition" target="_blank" title="Play the Do You Know competition">correct answer</a> will give participants an increased chance of winning the competition, with the top three finishers winning an iPad and a solar-powered keyboard. EPFL, which has a branch in Ras Al Khaimah, is known for many scientific developments, including the first modern computer mouse in the 1980s. The solar panels inside the keyboards being given away as prizes, called dye-sensitised solar cells, are also an EPFL technology. They operate using a process that imitates photosynthesis. The winners will be announced in August.
