I hope that your first few days of 2014 have been wonderful and full of keeping those new resolutions. The New Year is usually a time for new beginnings, outlooks and fresh starts and I began 2014 with a flight to my new home for the next few months, Munich!
On New Years Day, I flew 1 hour and a half away from my home city of London to Munich, the capital of the German state of Bavaria. It is also home to the world's most productive intergovernmental astronomy organisation and my new work place, the European Southern Observatory (ESO). Comprised of 15 member states, ESO operates a suite of the world's most advanced telescopes in the world which scan the Southern skies and probe the Universe for untold stories waiting to be discovered. With telescopes in three sites in Chile - La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor, ESO is working on painting an ever growing picture of the cosmos.
It is vital that the findings revealed from the hidden universe are communicated to the public and this is where my department comes in. I am a Science Communication Intern within the education & Public Outreach Department (ePOD) of ESO. You can read biographies of the department members, including myself on the ESO website here. It is within ePOD that I am learning more about the science communication process and working with the team to produce press releases, popular articles, image/video captions and scripts in order to effectively communicate scientific information to a broader audience.
I'm very happy that I'm working in a field that I've pursued since a young age and I hope I can inspire others who have similar aspirations to continue to strive to achieve them.
Is the best way to teach physics to kids to make them think that they're just playing a fun game? Sneaky, but effective. With children (and me) glued to their screens with addictive games such as Candy Crush and Minion Rush, why not inject some space education into the games market?
Stephen Hawking has gone to great lengths to promote science through traditional methods such as books and television however he has now entered the software arena to inspire young scientists. The theoretical physicist and Professor teamed up with Random House to create 'Snapshots of the Universe', his first official app.
The iPad app contains mini-games, videos and text that illustrate a plethora of fundamental space concepts. Ranging from learning about G-force with Einstein and putting planets into orbit to master the theory of relativity, the game presents physics and space in a fun and engaging way. Video explanations from Hawking himself are available for the user to delve further into the depths of space.
" Based on the work and writings of Stephen Hawking, this app teaches both adults and students the basic theories that govern our lives on Earth as well as the movement of the stars and planets. You can play and learn at the same time in each of the eight experiments included in Snapshots of the Universe:
- Spin planets in orbit with your own solar system
- Drop objects with Galileo to learn about gravity
- Let Einstein feel some G-force in outer space
- Search for black holes in the constellation of Leo
- Discover Einstein’s warped worldview
- Plus more…"
I think that games such as these are onto something. With increasing evidence on the declining attention span of the younger generation and their increasing ability to use technology such as iPads, teaching through games that encourage learning through entertainment may well be the future of teaching science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields.
Only 1 in 10 engineers are female. It's definitely time to fix that shocker of a statistic and to do so, it may be worthwhile taking a look at our childhood. A time where most of us spend our hours napping (I still do) and watching cartoons (again I still do), playing with toys is a past time that takes up a great deal of our time as children. However, the toys that we are exposed to are those that manufacturers think that we want. Girls around the world are encouraged to play with anything in the shade of pink, ranging from Barbie dolls to kitchen sets and playhouses, whereas toys that encourage engineering-minds to grow, build and invent are marketed as toys for boys.
Source: TrendsActive
I myself remember growing up surrounded by my Barbie doll friends and having several teddy bear picnics with delicious imaginary food, however my now engineer sister somehow managed to break outside of this girly mould. I would spot her taking apart things such as the TV remote control just to figure out how to put it back together and being far more interested in how things work as opposed to how much hair to cut off her doll to give her the make over of her life (RIP to all of my doll's hair). At the time, I just saw it as an odd past time to have, however looking back she was simply looking to the world around her in order to fulfil the engineering-mind that she clearly had and still has to this day.
It is this inquisitive, inventive mind of the budding engineer that San Francisco toy company GoldieBlox are harnessing in order to inspire the next generation of female engineers. They aim to provide girls with toys that offer more than what is found in the 'Princess Machine' world of the girls toy aisle of today.
GoldieBlox have released the clever advert below showcasing some serious girl power that rivals even that of the Spice Girls and possibly even Queen Bee herself. (Sorry Beyoncé) Now that's some powerful stuff. Watch the empowering video below featuring the best Rube Goldberg machine I've seen and share it with girls and mothers that you know to encourage them to dream outside of the pink and blue boundaries that society has taught us from such a young age.
"For the past 100 years, construction toys have inspired our boys to be thinkers, builders, and inventors. Our girls deserve the same...I created GoldieBlox because I believe that every girl is more than just a princess, despite what the pink aisle tells them. In under a year, we've grown from a home- made prototype to the shelves of Toys R Us. To survive next to Barbie, we need your help disrupting the pink aisle. Oh, and if we win we've got a group of 6 year old girls ready to rush the end zone. In tutus. "- Debbie Sterling Founder / Chief Officer of Fun
Vote for Goldieblox to win the chance of airing this advert at the Super Bowl here
I think it's important to share your passion for something that you feel strongly towards. Space, is something that I do feel this way about. However, it is also something everyone is connected to biologically, chemically, physically, environmentally and emotionally. With our everyday lives depending on the satellites that orbit our planet, to the stardust origins of the atoms within our own body, space affects us all.
This documentary was made by my classmate and friend Edu Ferrete as part of his Individual Project at ISU. It's on the importance of Space in both everyday life and for the future of mankind and was creatively made with just his own resources and the intention to inspire thought and provoke action.
