Science Rendezvous: Microbes at the library?!

Science Rendezvous is an annual event that connects scientists with the public to show everyone how fun science can be! This year, Science Rendezvous took place on Saturday, May 12th, and Let's Talk Science volunteers from the University of Guelph performed activities in downtown Guelph (super bubbles and slime!!) and at the main branch of the Guelph Public Library!

At the library, awesome volunteers Jan Edward and Nicole showed kids the cool, friendly, and sometimes scary microbes that play an important role in our lives! The participants had the chance to grow their own microbes, and here are the results! By the way, if you ever want to make your own media at home, check out this earlier post on our blog!

Here are the photos!

The 2012 All Science Challenge

Our second-ever All Science Challenge at the U of G was a tremendous success!! With twice as many kids participating this year, the competition was twice as stiff!! The hard work of all the participants was evident in their amazing answers to their difficult questions, and the creativity in the design challenge amazed parents, teachers, and judges alike! During the lunch period, we all enjoyed an amazing presentation by Wild Ontario, who brought live raptors into the competition room!

In the end, the top two spots went to the two teams from Rockwood PS! Third place went to a team from Kortright Hills PS! Kortright Hills PS also walked away with the Spirit Award (we couldn't say no to tu-tus!).

Check out some of the exciting pictures from our big day! Many more photos, as well as high resolution versions of these pictures, are available upon request!

A team from Rockwood putting their heads together.

Let's Talk Microbes at Family Housing!

Let's Talk Science volunteers visited the community group at Family Housing for a super fun activity about Microbes last week! We learned why it is important to wash our hands properly...

Unwashed hands

It's Rural Week!

Whew! We've been so busy lately that it's been hard to keep up with the blog! Stay tuned for another post soon about some of the other amazing things we've been up to!

Our beautiful spring weather has meant the return of rural trips! Now that we don't need to worry about school closures or unsafe road conditions, our volunteers have hit the road, to bring science to kids in three rural communities in this week alone!! Derek, Midori, and Mary paid a return visit to St. Peter's school in Dublin, ON, to teach the grade 1/2 students about simple machines, and to show the kids how to make Cheerio-a-pults (sorry parents :p)!! Bryce and Erin are spending most of the day today in Arthur to discuss why matter matters, to teach the grade 4's about pulleys, and to talk to the kindergartens about why science and math are cool! And Karen and Crystal are off to Maryborough to perform some chemistry magic, to deliver some super science challenges, and to teach the grade 1's about energy in their everyday lives! These three dedicated teams of volunteers have travelled a combined 400 km this week!!! 

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!