On Saturday, I was lucky enough to be involved with an activity for the British Science Festival (BSF). It was organised by the Birmingham chapter of Science Grrl: an organisation which celebrates and supports women in science. The description in the BSF booklet was:
A simple idea, but it worked brilliantly! Initially, the area outside the library was a bit quiet, but the science busking events in the square were quick to kick off and soon the area became quite busy. We all had postcards with us to give out, and had some pretty impressive badges made by Jon Wood to identify us. I went down to the area by the science busking gazebos and quickly discovered how much fun you can have talking to families!
The aim of the day was to get the kids (especially girls) to learn more about the range of different things a "scientist" can involve. An opening line that went down well with the girls was "Do you want to hear about all the different kinds of science girls can do?". I then went on to use my beaker necklace and conical flask earrings to help them guess that I was a chemist, and the fuel cell membrane in my pocket to talk about hydrogen. I had some really great conversations, including one extremely enthusiastic girl who exclaimed "That's so cool!!" when I told her about using hydrogen and oxygen to make electricity. This made my day!
The best comment that I had all day was from a parent of a girl who was about to go into secondary school. She said (and I'm not making this up!)
"ScienceGrrls will be invading the city, each wearing a badge inviting you to talk to them. Try to guess what they do by studying their props and find out why they love to work in science as they take to the purple soapbox. Pick up a postcard and collect as many stamps as you can."
A simple idea, but it worked brilliantly! Initially, the area outside the library was a bit quiet, but the science busking events in the square were quick to kick off and soon the area became quite busy. We all had postcards with us to give out, and had some pretty impressive badges made by Jon Wood to identify us. I went down to the area by the science busking gazebos and quickly discovered how much fun you can have talking to families! The aim of the day was to get the kids (especially girls) to learn more about the range of different things a "scientist" can involve. An opening line that went down well with the girls was "Do you want to hear about all the different kinds of science girls can do?". I then went on to use my beaker necklace and conical flask earrings to help them guess that I was a chemist, and the fuel cell membrane in my pocket to talk about hydrogen. I had some really great conversations, including one extremely enthusiastic girl who exclaimed "That's so cool!!" when I told her about using hydrogen and oxygen to make electricity. This made my day!
The best comment that I had all day was from a parent of a girl who was about to go into secondary school. She said (and I'm not making this up!)
"I always thought of science as being a 'boy' thing, but now we've come here and spoken to all of you today, we know that's not the case"And it's comments like that that make you realise how worthwhile these activities really are - I'm proud of being a Science Grrl, and just slightly disappointed that I can't wear the badge all the time...
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| View from the top of the new library |
Hi Rosalind,
ReplyDeletePeerhaps you can't wear the badge all the time - but your blog could! Get a ScienceGrrl badge to display in your sidebar here http://sciencegrrl.co.uk/sciencegrrl-button/
I have finally worked out how to add the button! Proudly sat in the top corner now...
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