The week before last was a
busy one for my alter-ego “Dr D” with two very different events on two
consecutive days.
On Tuesday I spent the day
at The Collection museum in Lincoln
Banks was a botanist who
collected and catalogued many new plant species whilst on his voyage on the
Endeavour, and one of the ways in which Banks classified these new species was
to look at the structure of their flowers.
We all love flowers…
They’re visually attractive, they smell nice, they make people happy when given
as a gift… But what are they actually for?
Well, flowers are actually
the plants way of reproducing!
In a series of workshops I
showed children and their families what each of the parts of a flower is for
(not just the pretty petals, but the male and female reproductive parts as
well) by doing a flower dissection. We also looked at some pollen at 200 times
magnification using my mini microscope.
Once the children had
learned about the different parts of the flower they made some wonderfully
colourful, and scientifically accurate, paper flowers… We had stamen made out
of cotton buds, pistils made out of pipe-cleaners, egg-box sepals, and stems
made from straws… There was such a lot of creativity on show it was wonderful!
Then, on Wednesday, I had
been invited to attend an open evening for the new University Technical College
which will be opening in Lincoln
I wasn’t quite sure what to
expect, but I went along to the Engineering Hub at the University of Lincoln
The audience at the UTC
event were older that the children I’d been working with the previous day, as
most were considering attending Lincoln UTC, which will provide specialist
education for 14-18 year olds who want to study science and Engineering
subjects.
As well as staff from the
UTC itself, and their partner organisations The University of Lincoln and
Siemens, there were a wide range of other employers in attendance. The idea of
the event was to highlight the different career possibilities that Science and
Engineering qualifications can lead to, and the different companies and
organisations who will be involved in providing training to UTC students.
As my career path within
the world of science has been what might be described as “unconventional” my
discussions with prospective students and their parents were a little different
to those going on around me with representatives of larger companies!
Being based in a room with
the RAF, NHS and RPC Plastics made my table full of apparently random household
items look a bit chaotic compared to their very professional displays, but I
still had quite a lot of interest.
I decided that the best way
to ‘pitch’ my role was as an example of how varied careers in the sciences can be
and tried to highlight the importance of effective Science Communication to these
aspiring scientists and engineers of the future. I tried to get across the idea
that a career in science can be very rewarding, even if it isn’t the career you
originally intended!
I e-mailed the
Vice-Principal of the UTC to thank him for inviting me to attend a few days
later, and had a lovely reply from him saying “It was a pleasure to meet you
last Wednesday – I am always pleased to meet another keen scientist!”… I’m glad
that my enthusiasm shone through… To be honest I find it hard to hide my
passion for Science, so it’s not really a surprise!
As well as making some valuable
contacts at the UTC I also had interest from some local schools and businesses,
and have raised awareness of the fact that Dr D’s Science Days is a local Lincolnshire
What a fabulous week!!
