Boiling hot chance to win an iPad2

If you know what is the lowest boiling point of water in the UAE you could win an iPad2.

ABU DHABI // Learning has always been rewarding and now even more so with our online science competition in which you can win an iPad2.

If you knew that traditional windtowers work by funnelling air you could have already been in with a chance of winning by playing "Do You Know …", which was created by the Swiss university Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), and running on www.thenational.ae and in its Frontiers section in The National.

There will be a 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, this week's question in the competition asks what is the lowest boiling point of water in the UAE?

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 correct answer 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.