• Question: If you could come into our school, how would you get us interested in your field of science?

    Asked by elektron to Davie, Gemma, James P, James V, Nuala on 27 Jun 2012. This question was also asked by hannah98.
    • Photo: James Pope

      James Pope answered on 27 Jun 2012:


      Hi elektron,

      I’m actually going into a school tomorrow (Thursday 28th) to talk to years 7-10 about careers in science and looking at tackling the stereotypes of scientists. I do a lot of this work going into schools because I am a STEM Ambassador (http://networking.stemnet.org.uk/user/6911) and our role is to show our science to school kids and show that it is possible for anyone to be a scientist if they want to.

      I also run a class in the Leeds Festival of Science, called “Hot Under The Collar”, were I try to get kids like you to get interested in my field. I give an introduction to me, and then talk about the greenhouse effect and then I get the kids in the class to use an online climate model (http://jcm.climatemodel.info/), which I didn’t create sadly, and give the kids questions on how the temperature responds to the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

      After this, I pass out some rock samples and talk about how we can use rocks and fossils to find out about past climate, with some practical work looking at the rocks.

      This is how many of my sessions go, with the kids doing as much as possible in the 90 minutes and me filling it with lots of my highly energetic bouncing around and talking! I’m quite mad when I do these sort of things!

    • Photo: James Verdon

      James Verdon answered on 28 Jun 2012:


      Hi elektron,
      To begin with I’d probably show you a couple of videos of volcanic eruptions. Once you see what volcanoes can do, you’ll realise they can be pretty interesting things to study. Here’s a couple of examples if you’re allowed to watch youtube:
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3aqFCT87_E

      Or even this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egEGaBXG3Kg
      I would never do what this guy did – waaayyy too risky!!!

      Then I would show some models that we have that demonstrate how eruptions work. We can create a mini, model volcanic eruptions in your lab. Finally, we can talk about how difficult it is to predict eruptions. Imagine you are a mayor of a town near a volcano. You are constantly receiving updates about the volcano as it nears the point of eruption. At what point do you give the order to evacuate everyone from their homes (which could cost millions of pounds to do)?

    • Photo: Gemma Purser

      Gemma Purser answered on 29 Jun 2012:


      Hi elektron,

      Good question!

      I would start by showing you some facts about the carbon dioxide and the atmosphere and how this is linked with global warming. Then I would explain the concepts of carbon capture and storage using our carbon capture and storage model, where you can have a go at pumping in air to represent the carbon dioxide and see how it is trapped underground. I would bring the different types of rocks in to show you what cap rocks and reservoir rocks look like, what they are made of, how they are formed and how they help us store carbon dioxide underground.

      We could then show you some simple experiments to show you how carbon dioxide as a gas can react with a saturated solution to form calcium carbonate, which is a solid, this is one of the compounds that is predicted to form underground in the storage reservoir.

      Finally we would have a look at all the options we have for generating energy at a rate to meet the worlds ever increasing energy demands whilst also trying to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This can be done using a computer game where you have control of the ways in which we generate energy like do we build renewable wind turbines, nuclear or coal fired power stations. And what effects they have on other resources on our planet like water and space and how they will effect the economy.

Comments