BIG e-news: Issue 12 - December 2009

Just as most people are counting down to the festive season, things at BIG HQ have gone a bit crazy as we reveal our Bursary winner, announce our successful tender for the SCORE project, appeal for a host venue for the 2010 Event and publicise our forthcoming Skills programme. As we go to print there are still a handful of places left on the Improvisation Skills day in January to be held at the Dana Centre in London. Whether you want to improve your rapport with the audience or build your confidence so you're ready for anything, improvisation offers a range of skills to help. Find out more about the event and to book your place.

Recently, BIG was asked if we were interested in running some workshops on curriculum change on behalf of the Science Community Representing Education (SCORE). We have just heard that our bid was successful which is a real boon for BIG, a recognition that we really do represent professionals in the sector. It also earns us a bit of cash and effectively gives us more (free!) skills days. Find out more.

Sarah Vining, BIG Administrator admin@big.uk.com

BIG Bursary Winner Announced!

Congratulations to Jenny Dockett, Public Engagement Manager at the Centre for Life in Newcastle who has been awarded this year’s BIG Bursary.

Jenny will be finding out what science centres and outreach providers can learn from the Forest School ethos and will attend a 5-day training course. Both Forest Schools and Science Centres take learning outside of the classroom and engage children in a different way to schools. Forest schools are becoming increasingly popular, the key to their success is engaging children to learn through fun activities and hopefully when they go back to the classroom they take their new found confidence in learning back with them.

The Little Event Review

Toni Hamill, Centre for Life

As the future of science communication began to gather at Thinktank one Monday morning in September, there was a buzz of excitement in the air. Yes, Monday morning, a buzz of excitement!

People working in science centres, museums, festivals, freelancers and students travelled from all over the UK for the Little Event. For these people just starting out in science communication careers it was a chance to meet like minded individuals, develop skills and get their first taste of BIG.

The day started with an introduction to learning and evaluating from Sue Cavell. Everyone then worked in groups to apply the theory to practical examples. After letting everyone experience that awkward feeling an audience gets from an over enthusiastic presenter, Kenny Webster guided us through engaging our publics with science. Confident in our abilities, he then let us loose on the galleries (and visitors!) around Thinktank. The careers session provided a chance to reflect on where you are and where you would like be. Andy Lloyd and Karen Bultitude shared the hard truths of pursuing careers in this field, and provided their top tips for achieving your career goals.

Throughout the day the atmosphere was friendly, unintimidating and supportive. This was perhaps most noticeable during James Piercy and Natasha Verniquet’s presenting session, which focused on making an entrance and an exit. Inhibitions were thrown aside, and creative uses and presentations of the miscellaneous objects provided by James, soon followed. A fantastic end to a day which just flew by.

I’ve had the chance to thank our hosts, speakers, sponsors and delegates, but this event wouldn’t have worked without the support of the BIG membership, so here’s my chance to say a huge thank you to all of you who spread the word of the Little Event and encourage people to come!

Same time next year?

BIG changes to the National Curriculum

James Piercy, BIG Chair

As many of you will be aware we are in a period of major change to the English National Curriculum for science and maths right across the key stages. As providers of Enhancement and Enrichment activity for schools, awareness of these changes is essential to us in ensuring we can meet the needs of pupils and teachers.

The Science Community Representing Education (SCORE www.score-education.org/index.htm) provides a coherent voice for the science education community on the long-term issues in science education. As part of its aim to improve access to high quality STEM activity in schools, SCORE is keen to support STEM providers (us) in understanding and implementing these curriculum changes.

BIG is pleased to have been invited by SCORE to work with them to develop free workshops for STEM providers on the impact of curriculum change.

Two different workshops - one for primary and one for secondary material – are planned for February at three venues around England. Each will include a specific element aimed at maths activity, which is often under-represented in STEM delivery.

Primary workshop

• Current and planned changes to the Primary curriculum;
• Effective Mathematics enrichment activity for primary schools;
• Developing E&E activity to support Scientific Process, introducing a foundation for How Science Works.

Secondary workshop (running twice)

• Current and planned changes to the curriculum at Key Stages 3&4 and new diplomas;
• Effective Mathematics enrichment activity at secondary level;
• Developing E&E activity to support the How Science Works programme of study.

With input from those driving the change, teachers and providers, we are confident that the days will prove enormously useful to BIG members who develop materials for schools.

Almost as important as the days themselves is the invitation to run them. That BIG is recognised as an important voice in the sector and is trusted to deliver material of this kind is testament to the hard work of its members in professionalising the organisation and raising its profile amongst stem practitioners.

Details of times and venues of the free workshops will follow shortly. Keep a close eye on the website and BIG-chat for further information as this will include details of travel bursaries for you may be eligible.

We will also be looking for providers who can contribute to the days by providing workshops on their maths or scientific process/how science works activities and how they have embraced changes to the curriculum. If you are interested in making a contribution, please contact Rachel Mason, email: parrymason1@btinternet.com

I hope that you will support the workshops and we look forward to developing more partnerships of this kind in the future.

How I (accidentally) got the BNP to confess they are causing climate change

Dean Burnett, Science Comedian

As a rule, most right-wing political groups don’t accept that climate change is occurring at all. If they do, then they deny that it is a man-made problem. Imagine then how surprised I was when I was told that climate change is indeed occurring, and it is being caused deliberately. By an employee of the BNP.

To preface this, I wished to write some material regarding the BNP in the wake of the Question Time controversy. I’d been informed that the BNP have an online shop selling their merchandise. Useful to know, should you ever need to attend a Nazi’s birthday party, but not want to arrive empty handed.

I was wondering if the bile spewing garments they sold were British made or, like most textiles, made overseas. I reasoned if it was the latter, the party would be betraying their principles by sending money to foreign countries. If it’s the former, given our manufacturing capabilities, if you buy clothes from them you’d probably have to ‘send them back’. Ha. Ha. Ha. There was no information available on the website to tell me either way, so I contacted them directly (Under a pseudonym, obviously, being on the BIG-chat list is bad enough; don’t want to be inadvertently registered ‘elsewhere’).

This is the reply I got.

BNP Shop: “We've been unable to change Britain's climate to grow cotton locally, hence the cotton for the shirts comes from overseas…”

So, according to the BNP, climate change is real and they are directly responsible, in an incredibly disproportionate attempt to grow cotton locally (ironically, an organism not native to the UK). Has anyone covered this in their workshops or talks? I feel it is worth bearing in mind for future.

This is a rare claim in many ways. Firstly, an ultra right wing party stating that climate change is real, and that they are directly responsible? Odd. Also, the positive aspects of global warming? Interesting take, I imagine it would do wonders for our locally produced wine too, and that could probably help the economy.

It’s possible they were making a philosophical comment about the willing indifference of our society in general in the face of the damage we are wreaking to our environment? Sounds like something they’d do.

Overall, an interesting, if borderline insane contribution to the ongoing climate change controversy.

Read Dean’s full blog on this issue

Guerilla SciBar - Manchester Science Festival 2009

Mark Hillen, markhillen@gmail.com

There’s a first time for everything. Sitting absolutely knackered and totally sizzled in our sciencey group, in an off-Oxford Road pub called Jabez Clegg, just having finished some science engagement work for the British Science Association. It was a pub crawl in many respects – a pub crawl legitimised by a passion for science.

So how did we end up here? Dave Price (of science made simple and inflatable sumo wrestling outfit wearing fame) and I run the Didsbury SciBar. It’s great; it’s on every last Monday of the month in a pleasant enough pub – the Pitcher and Piano – but we do tend to get an audience of people who are already engaged in science. It occurred to us (and apologies for the religious terminology) that we were preaching to the converted: we needed to take science to the heathens, where they weren’t expecting it, and the best place to find heathens was central Manchester’s pubs.

Then came the panic. How on earth will we do this? Can we convince a speaker to come along and just start a debate in a pub apropos of nothing? Would we need plants to start a debate? What about supporting materials? Should we take a netbook and a picoprojector? Where would we get a picoprojector? What is a picoprojector?

Then came the dreaming. We could do buzzwordy things like use guerrilla marketing; build up a buzz on twitter; reveal the next location simultaneously by tweet, Facebook, local radio and mass texting. Could we get Ben Goldacre along?

The reality was none of that. We had the Didsbury Scibar team of Dave and I, Natalie Lane of the British Science Association, and three lovely volunteers from Manchester University in matching t-shirts. We did have an additional ace up our sleeves beyond Dave’s immense science busking skills; Matt Parker, of FameLab™ err, fame. Matt is best described as a stand-up mathematician, and in addition to being a gentleman, scholar, acrobat, he’s a card shark too.

So. We had two icebreaking buskers to approach tables, and then we had the back-up team that was prepared to discuss anything about science that anyone wanted to talk about. As we bounced from Kro Bar to the Briton’s protection, to the Green Room, then the Lass O’Gowrie, ending up at Jabez Clegg. In between crawling between pubs, we discussed the true meaning of electrical earth, homeopathy, herbal medicine, the shape of the earth and why it isn’t a sphere, trapped nerves and codeine, and finally, detox regimens and what it means to have a functioning liver and kidney.

Our entertainers had people tied up in ropes, playing cards, and depleting neurotransmitters from people’s visual cortices with spinning spiral discs, then freaking them out by showing them a white rabbit, which appeared to grow or shrink depending on the direction that the disc was spun. That one never gets old. Matt bumped into John Simmit – Dipsy of the Tellytubbies, which was mildly surreal. Turns out he’s not green in real life.

We managed to promote the Science Festival by leaving people with programmes and stickers; we entertained people, and we became slowly sozzled. As they say on online forums, WIN!

A Day in the Life of...
Alom Shaha, Science Teacher and Freelance Science Communicator

A typical day at work consists of:

It really depends on what I’m working on and whether or not I’m at school. I can be doing anything from spending hours at my computer reading and writing, to being out filming in a science lab, to doing some kind of talk / live performance. Whatever I’m doing, there will always be at least 6 cups of tea involved.

What got you into this career?

A passion for science and education, a refusal to settle for a working life that I didn’t absolutely love, and just the simple realisation that I could create my own “career”.

What is the best thing about your job?

I probably have more than my fair share of fun in my “work”. I am doing stuff that is varied, creative, intellectually stimulating and, I hope, worthwhile.

... and the worst?

Not knowing where funding for the next project is coming from… or whether it’s coming at all.

What is your favourite meal?

Rice with a selection of home-made Bangladeshi curries. Not the kind you get in “Indian” restaurants.

What is your favourite smell?

Body Shop’s “White Musk” from about 20 years ago. It’s what my imaginary girlfriend from that period wore.

What talents do you possess?

No genuine talents, I’d say I was a “grafter”.

What talents would you like to possess?

A beautiful singing voice. Or at least one that was in tune and other people wouldn’t mind listening to.

Which actor do you think should play you in the film of your life?

Winona Ryder - so I could get to meet her and because the poor thing hasn’t had a decent role in ages. Unless it’s a posthumous film, in which case I wouldn’t care.

Which living person do you most admire and why?

My youngest brother, Shalim. He has overcome incredible obstacles to become one of the few people I know who can genuinely be described as “inspirational”.

Most beautiful place on earth?

Anywhere by the sea, away from people.

What is your Motto for life?

No single motto – I live my life in the knowledge that, “this is it”, so I’m trying to make the most of it and do as little harm along the way as possible. “Unto thine own self be true” and “don’t judge another person until you’ve walked a mile in their shoes” are “mottos” I try to adhere to, albeit not always successfully.

Making Ancient Microscopes

Richard Ellam, L M Interactive

Toni (van) Leeuwenhoek was a linen draper from Delft in Holland. He was also the greatest microscopist of his age, the late seventieth and early eighteenth century, and is credited with being the first to see animal cells, human sperm, bacteria and many microscopic organisms.

His work is know through a series of letters he sent to the Royal Society in London and his passion for the minute seems to have been ignited by seeing Robert Hooke’s Micrographia published in 1665. This was really the first scientific coffee table book, a large format volume containing very high quality engravings of microscopical views of common objects, most famously a flea. Hooke was curator of experiments at the Royal Society, which may have influenced Leeuwenhoek’s decision to publish his findings through the English society despite the poor political relations between Holland and England in the late seventieth century.

Leeuwenhoek’s discoveries were not made with the elaborate compound microscopist favoured by Hooke, with its expensively decorated tooled leather tube and turned wooden lens holders. His microscopes were tiny instruments, on average only about 75 mm long made from scraps of brass and using just one tiny lens to magnify objects up to about 250 times. These microscopes were so easy to make that in the 30 or so years of his scientific career Leeuwenhoek made about 500 of them. Of this number only nine are now known to survive, and the best known of these rare and precious survivals is kept in a museum in Utrecht.

The very simplicity and apparent crudeness of these instruments make them attractive to recreate. The originals being so precious, no one will have the chance to use them again, but it is possible to accurately reconstruct the experience of discovering nature through these amazing little instruments.

Making one for the first time is a most satisfying experience. For me the metalwork involved was routine and trouble free, although drilling holes as small as 0.75 mm diameter, even in the thin brass used to make the lens holders is always a slightly worrying business. Making the lens was a completely new experience as I’ve never done any glass working before and I was amazed at how easy it is. The tiny lenses used in these instruments are not ground and polished with abrasives. Rather they are made with hot glass in a flame, and effectively they make themselves which is a most satisfying thing to see happen.

It goes like this. You heat up the centre section of a glass rod about 6mm diameter in a Bunsen flame. When the glass is red hot and has gone soft like toffee you take it out of the flame and pull the ends apart to draw out a fine thread of glass. Once its cooled (ouch!) break the thread off the rods and reheat one end of the filament in the cooler part of the flame. The glass melts and surface tension pulls the molten glass into a tiny ball which gets bigger the longer you hold it in the flame. It’s quite easy to measure the size of the ball with callipers and to stop when you get to a certain size. The biggest balls you can easily make this way will be about 3 mm across, plenty big enough for microscopes.

If you can overcome the obvious problems associated with working hot glass this process seems to offer some potential as a workshop activity, certainly for older children and maybe even adults. You don’t need to make the lens holder in metal to get a working microscope, a confection of cardboard and wood will serve, but lacks the durability of the metal originals. If you were going to do this you’d need to use lenses about 3mm diameter, rather than the smaller 2mm lenses used in the metal microscopes, as the larger lenses are lower powered and easier to focus in a less rigid mounting.

I have been commissioned to make a small batch of proper metal replicas for Clarke Hall Museum in Wakefield. This is a historic house, set in the 1680s, where a whole range of activities are delivered by costumed interpreters. Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes fit exactly into this period and allow the museum’s programme to expand to, for the first time, include a science activity. The objects we’re going to be looking at? Fleas, lice and bedbugs - the familiar accompaniments to life in even the greatest of houses 325 years ago!

What's new?

Natasha Verniquet has a new role as Science, Education and Enterprise Manager at Science Oxford...

Sarah Vining returns to Techniquest as Head of Marketing & PR and also joins the Science Communication Unit at UWE on a freelance basis...

Big congratulations to David Price of science made simple (see Sumo picture right) for scooping this year’s Joshua Phillips Award for Innovation in Science Engagement (Josh Award)...

If you have any news to announce for the March edition of enews please let us know.

Website Content Champion Needed!

BIG is still looking for someone to look after, source, commission and develop website content that BIG members will want to read and refer to. This is a BIG Executive Committee voluntary role which is a great professional development opportunity for anyone wishing to broaden their experience in sourcing web content and in committee work. As with all Executive Committee roles, you will need to provide a minimum 1 year commitment, and attend Exec meetings when required, although he/she will have no voting rights.

This is a content role, not a technical role. The BIG Administrator and Web Coordinator will take care of getting stuff onto the site. They'll also have a view and will want to be involved - as will the rest of the Executive Committee. We need the Website Content Champion to think like a member, and using their experience of the field to:

• tell us what should be on the existing web site and what should come off
• find content from elsewhere that we can re-purpose, use, or link to
• commission content from contacts and sources in the field
• perhaps provide an edited highlights of big-chat
• think about how we can develop ways for BIG members to contribute to the web resources, or comment on them.

Whilst this could easily take a load of time to do comprehensively, that's not what we are looking for. Making a start on part of the work above - perhaps adding 5 or 10 new articles a year would be a great start. So this is something that will interest you, but not exhaust or consume you.

If you think you might be interested, please contact admin@big.uk.com

With best wishes for a happy festive season from the BIG Executive 2009-10…

James Piercy, Chair
Andy Lloyd, Vice Chair
Rachel Mason, Treasurer
Natasha Verniquet, Secretary
Savita Custead, Event Coordinator
and Sarah Vining, Administrator

Contact BIG