When I think back to what influenced me most to become a scientist, I have never been able to pinpoint a precise moment. Like many children, I captured moths and fireflies in jam jars, played around with chemistry sets, polished rocks, pressed flowers and ferns between pages, looked at pond water under my father’s microscope and at the moons of Jupiter through his telescope. I was addicted to a series of stories about a teenaged boy who used science to solve problems, though I could relate more to his female side-kick, who always struck me as the more sensible of the two. I had a series of very good teachers, and I enjoyed all my science classes.
But until very recently, I had forgotten completely about the Science Fairs – until I was asked to judge one.
Not easy being green An experiment to test the effect of chlorine on hair
My friend Alom Shaha is an amazing guy: not only is he a freelance science filmmaker, but he’s also a part-time physics teacher at the Camden School for Girls. It transpires that the official UK science curriculum is so heartbreakingly easy that his students had finished it weeks earlier with both hands tied behind their backs and were filling in the remaining year with more adventurous, creative endeavors, including the school’s first ever Science Fair. When I met up with Alom and his pupils on the fateful afternoon, I found them out in the sunny grounds, learning about the physics of bubble blowing. In addition to the novelty of hearing Alom called variously called ‘Sir’ and ‘Mr Shaha’ by a chorus of winningly enthusiastic girls, I bore witness to a few bubbles that definitely seemed to violate the laws of physics, and got to enjoy a genuine English school dinner. (Disappointingly, there wasn’t a Turkey Twizzler in sight – after all the Jamie Oliver-inspired media hype, I’d been dead keen to try them on the grounds that any snack food condemned by the Daily Mail must surely be delicious.)
“We don’t really know how to do Science Fairs,” Alom confessed as he ushered me into the room. “It’s a Yank thing, isn’t it?”
He needn’t have worried: I was totally impressed. The projects touched on topics ranging from the aerodynamics of flight, the pharmacology of caffeine and the putative danger of lead in our lipsticks to whether chocolate is addictive (yes) and which soft drink is the worst for your teeth (Ribena, since you ask). Never mind that the methodology was a bit rough: for example, the kids responsible for the latter project thought it was perfectly fine to substitute eggshells for tooth enamel because they “read on the internet that they were similar”. And a group studying whether branding affected consumer choice hadn’t considered that it might be misleading to compare Pepsi to Coke disguised with a Pepsi label, because Coke and Pepsi might not taste the same, and two variables were being changed instead of one. But the look of intense concentration on their faces when I explained this, and their dawning comprehension, was a revelation: this is why people teach.
And no science fair would be complete without at least one baking soda and vinegar volcano, which erupted three times during the course of the hour to cheers and applause. A few no-shows were especially disappointing: for example, the question of whether a melon can grow from a seed in your stomach will probably remain forever unanswered.
Frothy Mind the Gap heartily applauds this old science fair staple
But what I and the other three judges found most interesting was the fact the projects split clearly into two camps: those that were merely descriptive and literature-research based (“What is acid rain?”) and those that actually tested a hypothesis (“Do different kinds of music affect heart-rate differently?”). We judges especially favored those that sought to answer a question, but even as I felt strongly that this should be the case, I couldn’t help remembering my own long ago blue-ribbon effort: a diorama of the solar system made out of paper mâché. It was only much later that I must have learned that science wasn’t actually about demonstrating what was already known to be there, but was about adding some new knowledge to the world.
Some of these kids, clearly, were well on their way.
Fantastic stuff.
Gosh. Almost makes me want to be a teacher, even without the added benefit of being called ‘sir’ by choruses of winningly enthusiastic girls.
You could always train your daughters to call you ‘Sir’.
The energy levels were pretty amazing. Even the ones who were clearly trying to look as if they were too cool and blasé to get excited by science were having problems containing themselves. I don’t remember it being like that in my school.
_and which soft drink is the worst for your teeth (Ribena, since you ask). _
You’re gonna get so sued.
Hmmm.
By reporting the results of an experiment?
I hope not!
It was only much later that I must have learned that science wasn’t actually about demonstrating what was already known to be there, but was about adding some new knowledge to the world.
…shit. Seriously? Now you tell me. Well, that explains a lot…
Well, Ian, maybe your lab would appreciate a volcano.
thanks Jennifer. Children would benefit if more of us would judge science fairs. I am not even sure we have any in Davis but now will find out.
I think if I was going to do it again, I’d quite like the chance to speak with the organizers beforehand to see if there was any way of inspiring the kids to make their projects hypothesis-driven, maybe even give them the opportunity to chat about their ideas with a scientist beforehand. Maybe it’s a bit too ambitious, but if someone could just go over the basics of the scientific method as applied to their specific goals…I know they probably learn this stuff in the abstract, but if they got to directly apply it, it might stick better. I don’t know.
How about getting the kids to submit a 5000 word application to enter the competition and then only let 20% of them participate in the fun? Surely that would teach a valuable scientific lesson…!
Seriously though, was your appreciation of their enthusiasm tempered somewhat but your real-life experiences of some of the down-sides of science?
Not at all. I don’t ever dwell on the negatives anymore; if I did, I would never have returned to science. Perhaps I am still under the spell of the second chance, but for me, the good things are the only things that matter.
My favorite group of kids was one that that didn’t win. Their experimental set-up was ambitious and their graph actually had error bars. The data was typically ambiguous, the sort of data I generate on a weekly basis, the sort where conclusions are difficult to draw. With great sadness, they told me that they knew ten samples was too small and they wished they’d had the the time to do 50.
Wow. There should be automatic grants for that class of student.
I mean, just — wow.
That’s pretty amazing. What grade was this?
‘Grade’…let’s see. They were quite old — I am not very good with the British system. I think they were around 15 years old.
You’re right; a little bit of money could have done a lot. I’m sure there are grants around for things like this, though, surely.
“We don’t really know how to do Science Fairs,” Alom confessed as he ushered me into the room. “It’s a Yank thing, isn’t it?”
I hadn’t seen them before I came to Canada. After judging a few I http://www.scienceinschool.org/2007/issue4/fairenough/ an article" for European science teachers on how to run a science fair.
Sigh. I am so incompetent at formatting NN things this week.
That was supposed to say “I wrote an article” and then link to this
Eva, that’s a fantastic little piece — everyone go read it.
I take to heart what you said about the disadvantages of competition. This was very much in evidence at the little fair I judged. But on the other hand, science is a very competitive endeavor, and maybe it’s good for the kids to start associating research with competition.
Or do you think it’s better to keep their love of science innocent for as long as possible? I honestly don’t know the answer.
Well, if we’re wishing, then science could be competitive but not totally cut-throat, and they could remain innocent.
I’d also like a speedboat and world peace. In that order, thankyouverymuch.
Personally I think a little competition is okay. I myself have been known to
trample on my grandmother to get to the topengage in a bit of ambitious behavior in the scientific arena.So far no one has been killed.
Jenny – it’s not about this post, but I can’t remember which one it was of the older ones… can you tell us anything more about your fiction deal yet?
Brian, your timing is impeccable.
I just received, a few hours ago, the final contract to sign. So it is probably okay to reveal that the novel – a tale of post-doctoral love, angst and skulduggery in a London cancer research institute – will be out this autumn from Cold Spring Harbor Press in New York.
I will probably blog a bit more about this in due course, but for me, the interesting thing now is the copyediting process, in which all my carefully written British English will have to be ‘translated’ for the American market. It’s not just spelling and grammar – there are certain vocab words that just don’t cut it with Yanks (e.g. ‘fag’). I have lived in the UK for so long that I am quite interested to see what other issues are flagged up – I am genuinely losing touch with my native tongue.
Apparently the Harry Potter paradigm is relevant here: Americans like the whole British vibe, so you have to know which words to keep and which to jettison. I was reading an article about this for Rowling’s works, which explained that the word ‘crumpet’ was maintained for verisimilitude and atmosphere, but things like ‘lorries’ had to be translated for clarity.
Woohoo!
Excellent! I’m just finishing my third book for a US publisher and don’t even have your native past to spot the cultural non-translations. It’s easy enough with the kind of thing you see on TV shows, but some things slip under the net.
For example, in my first book for them, I was writing about action at a distance. When explaining how the normal case is that something travels from A to B in order to make something happen I used the example of coconut shy at a fair. ‘A what?’ said my editor. In the book it’s a stone throne at a can.
Whoops – stone throne. Hmm. You know what I mean.
Yes, coconut shy only recently made sense to me – that and ‘tombolo’. I wouldn’t have translated it with that can analogy, though. There must be something more elegant!
Now, ladies, that we’ve sung Jerusalem I have pleasure in announcing the winners of last week’s cake contest:
Mrs De La Rue – French Tart
Mrs Higginbotham – Old English Crumpet.
By the way, I’ve read Jenny’s novel and it’s very nice. You can use that on your marketing blurb, if you like, Jenny, like this:
“Very nice” — Henry Gee
I can beat that.
“A rip-snorting labcoat-ripper”
Actually, if this is number 1, I haven’t read it, have I?
Nope. (Sniff.) I shall endeavor to carry on regardless.
Henry, do you secretly wish you were allowed to join the WI?
Your stoicism is an example to us all.
Henry, do you secretly wish you were allowed to join the WI?
When I was a lad, growing up in a small village in Sussex, my mother was the President of the local WI for many years. Guess who was occasionally press-ganged to fumble through Jerusalem on the piano…?
I think the WI is a fantastic organization. They were among the first bodies to rumble Tony Bliar for the spiv that he is. [oooh, bit political — ed].
Blair-bashing is perfectly acceptable in my salon, Henry.
Also, you could contribute home-made cakes and tarts.
Also, you could contribute home-made cakes and tarts.
I’m hoping to do something WI-related this autumn. The apple tree in the jardin at the Maison Des Gs is about 30000000000 years old, and yet produces a vast crop of cooking apples each year, each of which is as big as a baby’s head and could do an awful lot of damage to one’s person were one, say, Beelzebun Demon Bunny of DOOM, quietly pretending to be a chicken beneath it.
However, Mrs Gee and I have discovered that you can buy an electric jam maker that makes jam-making as easy as releasing calcium from intracellular stores, while falling off a log, backwards. So expect a DELUGE of apple chutney, folks.
I’m first in the queue. How much are you charging?
It’ll be free, folks.
My hair turned a tinge of green as a child due to swimming everyday.