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Asked by ashleigh27 to Christine, Edd, Jess, Nicolas, Zara on 21 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by imaperson, cutlerc.
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Edward Codling answered on 16 Jun 2011:
The winner from our ecology zone will get £500 to spend on a science activity that helps other people understand our work.
If I won the money I would get some local school students into the University of Essex and get them to take part in some experiments we are running to try to understand how human crowds behave. I would involve the students in the planning of the experiment and then also with the writing up of the results. We would then publish our work as a scientific paper and the students would then get their own science publication! After the work is complete I would also go and visit the school and talk a bit more about the work and how it fits into our studies of group behaviour in humans and other animals.
I have some more details in my profile if you take a look. All the other scientists also have details of their ideas in their profiles – everyone is planning to do some interesting things so take a look and see which you think is the best idea (and then vote for them!)
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Zara Gladman answered on 16 Jun 2011:
Like Edd said, the prize is £500 which will go towards a project that helps people like you to understand and enjoy science!
If I win the money, I’d like to use it to help school students to do some conservation of their own! I’d give them a batch of fish eggs and set up a hatchery in the classroom. In the wild, many fish eggs die or are eaten by other animals (like crayfish!)… very few will hatch and survive! By looking after the eggs in the classroom, the students will make sure that they survive. At the same time, I will teach them about the life cycle of the fish and about other river life.
After hatching, we would release the baby fish in the nearest river and wish them well on their journey! Hopefully everyone would have fun by learning about fish biology and doing real life conservation. For more information, check out my profile 🙂
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Jessica Chu answered on 18 Jun 2011:
Hi Ashleigh,
I would like arrange a group visit to the university and before the visit- I will ask everyone to select (broad or specific) areas that they are interested in finding out about. Then I will try my best to allocate different groups to people working in those area to give some of their time to do a guided tour around their lab and give a short presentation of their work. Everyone will be in small groups and the groups will rotate so everyone will get to visit the labs on their list! The visit can be followed by a guided school trip to the Science museum in London where everyone can watch something ‘sciencey’ at the IMAX 3D cinema there and explore different parts of the museum and ask more questions!
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Nicolas Biber answered on 21 Jun 2011:
Yes the scientist who wins the competition gets GBP 500 towards a communication project.
If I get the money I will invest it into an exhibit I want to put up at the National Marine Aquarium. It should be something not only for people to look at, but also to touch and interact with. I want to make people aware of science and of the problem I am studying at the same time.
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Christine Switzer answered on 21 Jun 2011:
If I win, I would use the money to develop environmental science experiments that can be done in schools or during school field trips. It does not take a lot of resource to do environmental science experiments.
As an example, students can assess the health of a local stream and track the changes over time. The ingredients for that experiment are a couple of pans, pen and paper for making notes and a good pair of wellies for wading. The pans are used to collect sediment from the streambed. By counting the types and varieties of critters in the sediment, you can get a good sense of the health of the stream. If a stream has problems, things like litter counts and stream chemistry can be used to figure out why. Water samples can be brought back to school and tested in science labs. I don’t know how many schools are doing things like these, but they are a lot of fun. I would use the money to connect with teachers, develop the field and lab kits, and run some trials with schools locally.
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