Science Pack Holiday Fun

My journey to starting a PhD has been hugely influenced by my participation in outreach. But I’m not just a participant. Being a provider or organiser of outreach is just as rewarding (or possibly more).

I’ve been helping with and running outreach and public engagement activities since I was in secondary school. I started by helping to run a Saturday Science club for primary school children and it’s steadily progressed from there. I’ve taught in schools, I’ve demonstrated at fairs and festivals, and I’m a Brownie Guider.  Outreach reminds me why I love Physics, even when nothing is going right in the lab. Nothing can beat the satisfaction knowing you’ve helped someone understand even the tiniest part of my research.

My most recent outreach event was a Science themed pack holiday for my Brownie Unit. We took 13 girls aged 7 to 10 away to a residential house for two nights with a theme tailored around their completion of the Stargazer and Science Investigator badges.  My friends and colleagues thought I was mad to give up my weekend to look after and entertain so many kids, but I knew it would be a fantastic and rewarding, if exhausting weekend.

Solar System Models

The main part of the pack holiday activities involved a wide game, where the girls (in groups of 5) went visited different stations to give them different skills which would help them go on a ‘Brownie Blast Off’.  There were four different zones: ‘Humans’, which represented Biology; ‘Feeding Us’, for food science (and my Brownie unit’s love of baking); ‘Building Things’, for Engineering; and ‘Exploring’, for Physics. We also did several short experiments for Chemistry.  The girls built balloon rockets, looked at the cells under a microscope, made pizzas, and lots of other exciting things. As part of the ‘Exploring’ zone, I wanted to teach them a bit about my research, so we had an activity called ‘What is light?’ and another called ‘How cold is cold?’.  

Cool Chemistry

What is Light?

For the first activity they built cardboard spectrometers (which I’d acquired from my department) and learnt about light being both a wave and a particle and how colour is wavelength.  They were very excited to see rainbows in their spectrometers!   

How Cold is Cold?

The question what is temperature gave the girls a lot to think about. We discussed different forms of energy which allowed them to understand that hot things move much faster than cold things.  We played a game to demonstrate this, based on traffic lights. The girls had a set area to run around in and four instructions: ‘Hot’ – run; ‘Room Temperature’ – walk; ‘Cold – fairy steps; ‘Absolute Zero’ – stop. The girls then played the game in different sized areas (or boxes) to increase the density. The game allowed me to explain why we need to cool atoms down to make precise measurements on them and lead into an explanation of laser cooling when the more adventurous girls asked how we cooled things down.

At the end of the weekend, we asked the girls about their favourite things on pack holiday. Among the general ‘we got to stay up late’ and ‘we saw our friends’ feedback, los of the girls said that their favourite part of the pack holiday was learning lots of new things. Straight from the Horse’s mouth: Learning is Fun! And I'm pretty sure we've got a few future scientist in the unit!

An Outreach Success Story

As a (very) early career researcher, I know first-hand the impact of outreach on young people starting STEM degrees and careers. Experience Physics outreach at university visit and events is what made me want to be a Physicist back when I was 11.

The first time I can remember wanting to be a Physicist (or approximately a Physicist) was when I was 11, in my first year of secondary school. I had been to a 1-day National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth (or NAGTY for short) outreach event at Leicester University called ‘How to be a Rocket Scientist’, and I brought the cardboard rocket I’d made (along with pictures of it flying) into a school science lesson and announced that I was going to be a rocket scientist. I’d never had any contact with a university before then and I can’t remember doing any science before secondary school so this was a pretty big leap (in fact a leap from Archaeologist – I spent too much time watching time team). After that fantastic day out, I went as many NAGTY things as possible: ‘Dig in a Day’ (indulging my love of Time Team), several CSI courses, ‘Mission to Mars’ at the National Space Centre, and a Physics summer school at Durham University.

The outreach events I went to even influenced my choice of university – I ended up going to Durham, and even went to the college we stayed in for the summer school.  During school, I did work experience at the UK Dark Matter Facility at Boulby Potash twice, all because I visited there during the summer school. And my career ambitions steadily progressed from the original Rocket Scientist to Astrophysicist, to Particle Physicist, to Astroparticle Physicist. 

But the inlfuence of outreach didn’t stop when I started university. I was assigned a mentor who sparked my interest in Atomic Physics (in fact I didn’t know what Atomic Physics was before I met him).  His generosity and support has been a pivotal part of my journey to doing a PhD in Cold Atoms and settling on the ambition of calling myself an Atomic Physicist or Quantum Physicist.

I’m proof that outreach and public engagement is absolutely crucial when encouraging young people to choose STEM careers. It’s essential for the continuing success of UK research.