Let's Talk SPOOKY Science is officially Famous!

I'm thrilled to announce that our 
Let's Talk SPOOKY Science 
booth at the Elora FrightFest is officially famous! 
(well, "famous" in Wellington County at least)

Check out:

http://www.wellingtonadvertiser.com/comments/index.cfm?articleID=18908

It also caught the attention of head office, who posted a story on the national LTS site:
http://www.letstalkscience.ca/news-and-events/news/1595-let%92s-talk-spooky-science-at-the-elora-frightfest.html

Saturday am: 5 volunteers from Waterloo and I entertained the kiddies.

Saturday night: Katie B, Derek T and Tanya M amped up the spooktacular-ness of our booth with glow in the dark and UV glowing slime!

Sunday: Keith P, Heather G, Shuang L and I mesmerized the masses with mysterious self-inflating (frozen) ghost balloons and hands on, super gross alien snot they could take home!

Way to go! We couldn't have done it without the help of these fabulous volunteers! Thanks everyone! Based on the success of this first run, I'm pretty sure we'll be making it an annual event!

Let's Talk SPOOKY Science

Let's Talk Science at the University of Guelph ran a booth all weekend at the Elora Fright Fest! 

U of Guelph volunteers were joined by some LTS volunteers from U of Waterloo to offer some special spooky Halloween-themed science demos for kids! Including:

• making coloured or glow-in-the-dark alien snot
• examining the density of 'eye balls'
• creating spooky self-inflating ghost balloons using liquid nitrogen or vinegar & baking soda
• monster toothpaste!
• lots of other fun activities

LTS at U of Guelph volunteers Keith, Heather, Ann (coordinator) and Shuang on Sunday!

LTS at U of Guelph volunteers Katie, Derek and Tanya on Saturday afternoon!

LTS at Waterloo volunteers Grace, Serena and Selina helping at our Let's Talk Science booth on Saturday morning. Photo compliments of Mike Robinson from the Wellington Advertiser: https://twitter.com/WellyAdvertiser/media

April Showers Brings Volunteer Awesomeness! :)

What an amazing semester we just finished. Thank you to all our volunteers for yet another amazing month of activities. Nancy and Amanda were sincerely grateful for help running the All Science Challenge, and for all the help given to make sure our regular classroom visits went off successfully!

A salute to those who ran awesome events in Owen Sound last month! Not only did you commit to four hours of transit time (WOW!), but you were flexible enough to run events with loads of kids on a BOAT! You did such an awesome job, LTS head office featured you on the main site, so check out:

http://www.letstalkscience.ca/news-and-events/news/1223-outreach-sites-team-up-for-science-fair-activities.html

Thanks again to Roman, Matt, Katie, Marshall, Larry, Erin and Heying!

Cheers!

Ann

Congratulations to the Let's Talk Science National Award Finalists!

The annual Let's Talk Science CIHR-Synapse Award recognizes an outstanding, innovative, health research-related activity done by a Let's Talk Science Outreach volunteer or pair of volunteers.

This year, we nominated Sana Khan and Justine Hutchinson for their efforts putting together an activity for Non-Smoking month at the Guelph Public Library. The Let's Talk Science head office agreed that they did an amazing job, and a jury of LTS employees and volunteers included Justine and Sana in the top three finalists for the award.

Congratulations girls

Read more about the 3 finalists and about Sana and Justine's activity here:
http://www.letstalkscience.ca/volunteers/showcase-and-awards/cihr-award-showcase.html

LTS in the Guelph Mercury Online

Hey everyone,
One of the events our Let's Talk Science Guelph volunteers helped with was in the online edition of the Guelph Mercury!

You can catch the write-up and some of the pics from the November 23, 2012 PA Day at West Willow Woods here:

http://guelphmercury.blogs.com

Kudos to the volunteers for helping run such a great program!

Let's Talk.. Philosophy?!

This year, we LTSers at the U of G have made a commitment to bridge the perceived gap between science and the arts! We want to help people recognize that science plays a major role in everything we do - even things without an obvious connection to math or science! So when we were approached by a graduate student in philosophy about putting together a presentation for his philosophy open house, we leapt at the chance! This collaboration was a huge success: we were even featured in an article in our local newspaper, The Guelph Mercury!!

Philopolis is an annual event at the U of G and McGill University that is the brainchild of Brooke Struck, currently a grad student in philosophy here at the U of G. He invited us to put together a panel about philosophy in science. We recruited a team of volunteers and some professors to discuss the species problem - just what exactly is a species anyway, and what are the implications for research in different fields, for politics, and for biodiversity and conservation?  We started off with a hands-on game about how to define species: are these critters just variation within a single species, or are they three different species? 

Five graduate students then presented about how species are used and / or defined in their fields of mycology, botany, conservation biology, and in the contexts of agricultural pest identification and the meaningfulness of model organisms. The presentations were followed by an entertaining debate between professors. The audience responded with some challenging questions, and in the end, I think all of us walked away with a new perspective!

Happy Darwin Day AND an article about LTS at Guelph!

Happy Darwin Day everyone! Today is Charles Darwin's 203rd birthday! To celebrate, why not send e-cards to your friends, family, and colleagues?

We are also very proud to share an article about Let's Talk Science at the U of G that was published online this week in the U of G e-zine, @Guelph! Check it out!