In June of 2024, the 18th Glasgow Science Festival took place. PIADS in collaboration with the University of Glasgow Optical Society delivered our “Faster than the Speed of Light” activities, engaging with young students and members of the public in Glasgow Botanic Gardens for two days. We demonstrated some of the basics of photonics through hands-on activities, exploring our theme of “Faster than the Speed of light” and were visited by 5 schools across the two days, as well as some of the public in the afternoons.
We had a total of three stations on our stall. Firstly, we created a wave machine using skewers and jelly babies, which showed how oscillations creates waves. The children got a jelly baby to skewer onto the wave machine, and a jelly baby to eat, and once word got around we became inundated with eager volunteers. We then demonstrated how data can be transmitted via light, playing animal crossing music sent by an LED and received by a solar panel connected to a speaker. While we explained how this worked, the children were able to move the solar panel around and hear how the sound could be controlled (and fully understand that the music was from the LED). We were then able to explain to them some of the emerging technologies that use this principle, and where they may start to see this in the future.
Our final station was handing out activity packs for them to take home with them. This included a make your own spectroscope pack (as well as some ideas for other experiments they can do using things they will have at home). While all of the instructions were inside the pack, we did take the opportunity to explain how the spectroscope worked, separating the different colours of light. We also got to show them that different light sources contain different wavelengths, by showing the difference between sunlight and a phone torch through the diffraction gratings. These demonstrations were popular with the children, with some returning faces, and also led to some interesting conversations with the public, about the future of photonics and how it impacts them. Glasgow Science Festival provides an invaluable opportunity for children to engage with Science in a non academic setting.
The ASPIRES studies [1,2] showed that the two main reasons that children stop having scientific career aspirations are based not on how much they enjoy science, but due to how they and their peers see themselves. Children who don’t feel recognised as ‘brainy’ or ‘having a science brain’ are less likely to engage with science as a career. Facilitating science participation in ways that aren’t being assessed allows children to build confidence in their scientific ability, and can challenge misconceptions about the type of person you need to be to be a scientist.
[1] Archer Ker, et al. (2013). ASPIRES Report: Young people’s science and career aspirations, age 10 –14. King’s College London.
[2] Archer, L., et al. (2020). ASPIRES 2: Young people’s science and career aspirations, age 10-19. London: UCL Institute of Education.