Going for a mosey around MOSI

Lab coat on, pipette in hand and food colouring at the ready – last Saturday I was sporting a giant badge saying ‘I’m a scientist, talk to me!’ and ready to speak to the good people of Manchester about what it’s like to be a Cell Biologist. The event I was taking part in was run by fabulous Science Grrl in collaboration with Manchester Girl Geeks and it involved several female scientists descending on MOSI to chat to the visitors about what they do for a living. The rather awesome group included archaeologists, chemists, biologists, palaeontologists, geophysicists, material scientists, mathematicians and physicists. I think we definitely showed the scope and variety within science!

The lovely Science Grrls
Image from @lisamarieke

Pikachu! gets the pointy end of a needle in the name of science.

I kicked off the day by helping out in a Manchester Girl Geek workshop called soft electronics. I‘d never come across this before but it turns out you can buy conductive tread that allows you to sew circuits into material. There was some ace customisation going on in the workshop including indicators sewn onto cycling gear, T-shirt designs and some ScienceGrrl/Manchester Science Festival bag personalisation. Katie Stecks (@Stecks) provided some adorable stuff toys to act as pin cushions but pointed out we shouldn’t feel too bad about sticking needles in them. She revealed photographic evidence showing several had been caught up to no good, including tax evasion and using the last of her ketchup. Shocking behaviour. I still felt bad for Pikachu though.

My trusty pipette!

Next up I did some rounds walking through MOSI. Whilst trying not to get distracted by the exhibits and activities I got chatting to a lot of people of all ages. All the Science Grrls had brought along pieces of gear from their research and I brought my trusty micro-pipette.  Six to 60 years olds – everyone seemed quite keen to have a go pipetting my blue and yellow food colouring. I got smaller children to guess what colour blue and yellow would make if we mixed them together by pipetting. With older children and adults we compared 20μl to 5μl, which showed how accurate the micropipettes are.

After wondering into the main hall it was time to do a stint on the science soap box, telling passers by what my research is all about. I must admit I was a little nervous – I don’t mind public speaking but getting up on a soap box and just starting to talk seemed a quite daunting. With some encouragement from the other Science Grrls I got up and did my bit. I’m so glad I did – people sitting near genuinely seem interested!

With a few more laps round the museum the day was drawing to a close. By the time MOSI was about to shut I had to be nearly dragged from a conversation with two teenage girls. They were thinking of doing triple science at GCSE. They weren’t sure because they didn’t know if they were good enough at physics and they’d been moved down to set 2. I told them about my experiences at school studying triple science (generally good!) and  how I know people who were in set 3 for science at school and went on to study Biology at The University of Manchester. Hopefully the girls will make the decision that is best for them but it was a great way to end the day, especially as organisations like Science Grrl and Manchester Girl Geeks are all about building young girls confidence in their ability to do science. To be part of day where we could go out and show people that science is for everyone was a fantastic experience.

Images from Science Grrl and Manchester Girl Geek websites (see below)

Check out the sites for Manchester Girl Geeks and Science Grrl and or follow them on twitter/facebook:

Science Grrl 

http://www.sciencegrrl.co.uk/

Twiter: @Science_Grrl

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SciGrrl

Manchester Girl Geeks

http://manchester.girlgeekdinners.com/

Twitter: @mcrgirlgeeks

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/McrGirlGeeks

Pharmacology Activity: Drug Testing

Back in October I ran some workshops relating to careers in Bio-Sciences. Each activity we did related to a particular degree programme and this one was all about Pharmacology.

As I’m sure you can appreciate I didn’t want to test any drugs that could be deemed even vaguely dangerous…imagine the risk assessments *shudder*. So, to maintain a balance between real world applications and safety we tested the effectiveness of some ‘new compounds’ that a drugs company were thinking of introducing into the market to treat heartburn. These new drug candidates were in fact Boots bog standard antacids mixed with varying amounts of Trebor XXXX mints.

After discussing stomach acid, heartburn and how antacids worked the students had to test out the drug candidates. Once the students had tested the drug candidates’ effectiveness they had to make a recommendation as to which one a pharmaceutical company should use in their new antacid drug.

If you want to do this activity you will need:

• Antacids.
• Chalky mints.
• Something to crush the above. I used a pestle and mortar. Now anything else I try to crush in it tastes minty.
• Around 0.5-1ml of Aspall White Wine vinegar per test – it’s a really dilute, weak acid so works very well and much more reproducible than making up dilute acid in different schools.
• Something to put the 1ml of vinegar in (I used eppendorf tubes), preferably with a lid so it can be inverted with solution in.
• pH indicator strips – must be pH scale not litmus paper (we used some Whatman ones my supervisor let me swipe from lab). The change in pH isn’t dramatic enough to be detected by litmus paper as the tablets are just a buffer and won’t turn the solution into an alkali. I think you could use pH indicator solution as well if the students only add a tiny drop, but using the strips is quite fun.
• A worksheet the students can write the pH of the acid before and after the addition of drug and jot down the recommendations to the drug company on which compound to use in their antacid.

Eppendorf Tube

Step 1. (Prep) Crush the antacids and mints. Make three mixes: 1) Equal mix of antacid and mints 2) Just mints and 3) Just antacids. Pre-measure them (although you could get the students to do this – we were short on time) and separate them into labelled tubes. We gave each group 3 eppendorf tubes about a quarter full of containing one of each mix.

Step 2. (Prep) Pre-measure out the vinegar into whatever you’re using to hold it , we used eppendorfs*. Each group will need 3 tubes of vinegar.

Step 3. The students need to measure the pH of the ‘acid’ before. They only need to do this with one.

Step 4. Tip the drug candidates into the acid and invert several times.

Step 5. Measure the pH after addition of drug candidates and based on their findings students can write their recommendation to the Pharmaceutical company as to which compound is most effective.

The only word of caution I would give in this practical is the vinegar is pretty pongy. Also, the mints quite clearly smell like mints so if anyone has suggestions for something else to use it would be greatly appreciated!

*If you choose to use eppendorfs like us, consider piercing a hole in the top and telling the students to protect their fingers with a piece of blue roll/tissue when inverting the tube.  We didn’t do this on the first session and I’d forgotten that mixing acid with a carbonate base will produce H₂O and CO₂ (D’Oh! Basic Chemistry). The CO₂ causes pressure build up and the eppendorf pops open (for the Biologists reading this – the same way they pop when you over boil gel samples). This was actually fine – the teacher found it funny and the students loved it, plus we talked about the reaction and pressure but it isn’t actually relevant for this practical. If you wanted to demonstrate how the gas is produced in this reaction for a chemistry practical however, this would work really well!

Mini-Beasts Microbiology Activity

This activity was part of the workshops I ran back in October and it was my favourite practical in the session. During the workshops each activity was related to a university degree course and this one was related to Microbiology. It involves viewing protozoa, nematodes and algae under a microscope and it’s a real crowd pleaser. I had two cultures, one enriched with algae and the other enriched with protozoa.

First we discussed the different types of single-celled organisms and I explained that we had protazoa and algae (plus a few nematodes – not single-celled!), which are a lot larger than bacteria and viruses. The students were given microscopes slides labelled A and B. On the white board/powerpoint there were numbered pictures of organisms that could be seen in either of the samples.  The students had to identify which organisms from the board were in which sample.

A colleague told me about the cultures you can buy from this great company, sciento. They’re really reasonably priced but it’s still probably more than most schools would pay for what would only be one or two experiments. This means the chances of the students having seen something similar are quite slim. They look great on most school microscopes but if you are taking this activity into a school, rather than doing it with your own microscopes, ask if you can use their best ones. In one school we used their KS3 (as opposed to KS4) and although they still looked ok, it wasn’t as amazing as when we used KS4 microscopes.

These are the cultures I used in this activity, which allowed me to have two distinct samples for the students could compare:

http://www.sciento.co.uk/catalog/item/7/

If you don’t need two different samples this mixed culture is visible under school microscopes and is a bit cheaper:

http://www.sciento.co.uk/catalog/item/4

The algae are beautiful, colourful in all shapes and sizes. The protozoa really move around a lot, which is great to watch!

I’ve also done other Cell Biology themed workshops at university with these cultures where KS3 students used university microscopes to visualise these as examples of single-celled organisms (the protozoa do have nematodes in though) and compared them to bacteria and their own cheek cells.

Whatever you decide to do with these cultures, they are lovely to use and can really enthuse students about Biology.

Working on Workshops

It’s been a very long time since I posted but the ol’ PhD work has been catching up with me of late (I’m now in my fourth and final year –eek!). I do want to put out a series of posts about some workshops I ran back in October though, before the final months in lab and the writing up takes hold.

The workshop was funded by the Biochemical Society and involved several small but exciting Biology practicals coupled with short videos of people who’ve studies Bio-sciences (see this earlier post). The aim of the workshop was to enthuse students about science and help them see a link between a subject they enjoy, higher education and a possible real world career. The students competed for points and during the activities and the team at the end with the most points won.

During the introduction I wanted to challenge the view of what a scientist looks like so I got the groups to describe a typical scientist. In every workshop, with a bit of directed questioning, each group described the carton on the right. I explained that scientists don’t look like this. Then showed a picture of my friend @Nick_A_Johnson (with his permission of course) and that got a laugh. More importantly though I wanted to make the point some scientists do have crazy hair and glasses but equally some don’t. Some are fat, some are thin. Some are old, some are young. It doesn’t matter what you look like or who you are – it’s your ability to think and enjoy science that matters. I then went on to point out they would see lots of different types of people who studied science in the videos throughout the workshop and this would also help them get an idea of some of the jobs available for those who go into Biology.

There were several activities in the workshop, which I will post about individually in case you want to try them, but here I will highlight a few things I learnt while running this style of workshop:

Workshops have a different atmosphere when you’re in school.

I’m used to running workshops and sessions in the university or museum, where you’re on your own turf. Often as a result the students are a little out of their comfort zone and impressed by their surroundings. The upshot is they’re much more likely to behave. I didn’t have any huge behaviour issues in my sessions but I soon realised the students are a bit more relaxed and a lot more chatty when you’re in their territory (school) and I needed to approach things slightly differently.

Advice: If you’re in a similar position (i.e. a researcher going out into schools to run a workshops or activity) establish the rules at the start of the session. Something that worked well for me was to tell the students at the start of the session that when I raised my arm I needed them to be quiet and listen for instructions. If they couldn’t hear the instructions then we wouldn’t get through as much fun stuff. Whenever I did this, students would see and tell their team mates to be quiet. I did plan on deducting points for teams that were talking but luckily the arm up technique worked really well and it never came to that

Start the session with your strongest activity

This sound like a no brainer, but in my first session I saved my favourite activity until the end as a treat. What I realised was that the students were the most animated and enthusiastic during this activity and if I had put it at the start it would have really set a nice tone for the rest of the workshop. I changed the running order for the following workshops and it really made a difference. The students were equally enthusiastic about some of the later activities that were less hands-on because their attitude to the whole workshop was very positive.

Advice: If you’re doing a workshop with lots of activities pick your strongest activity and put it at the start of the session. Also, don’t talk for too long at the start – get them up and doing something. If the students have to sit and listen for too long they might zone out. Obviously you need an introduction and a background to the science, but you can go into further detail and engage the students in discussion throughout the workshop. I find a ten minute introduction with plenty of questions to keep the students engaged usually works well.

Evaluate!

I do think there are some things that are incredibly difficult to evaluate from a one off workshop, particularly in relation to long lasting effects upon students’ perceptions of science and HE. There are however, really practical things you can get pointers on. For example, after my first workshop the feedback was that there were too many videos (seven in total originally) and that the last activity was their favourite. This meant I had feedback I could put into practice and improve the workshop. I reduced the number of videos in subsequent workshops and as a result the feedback about them changed to become very positive. In my experience negative feedback is almost always constructive and can be really helpful. Plus any positive feedback you might get is always lovely to read!

I also found when evaluating the students’ opinions on things like HE and science I should have used more close ended questions, where you pick an option, rather than open ended questions where you write an opinion. Using the latter meant although they were interesting, the answers were difficult to analyse.

Advice: Evaluate as much as possible and put the feedback into practice. Think carefully about the questions you’re asking beforehand and how you’ll be able to use the answers.

So I think that’s everything I can think of in terms of general things I’ve learned from running the outreach workshops. The workshops were so much fun to run and the students seem to really enjoy them. I would strongly encourage anyone who is interested in going into schools to get involved – most schools are really happy when researchers are willing to come out to them. If you’re interested in funding an activity both the Biochemical Society (click here) and Physiology Society (click here) offer funding for these types of events.

All of this post is based on my personal experience and different approaches work for different people. So do you have any experiences and advice you’d like to share? Comment below!

x-change podcast

Next week is the British Science Festival in Aberdeen. I’m really excited to be going as there’s some absolutely awesome stuff going on. Hopefully you’ll be able to come along to one of the many events taking place. If however Aberdeen is a bit too far afield to visit, you should check out all the highlights on the British Science Association x-change podcast and blog.

There’s a daily podcast (Tuesday-Saturday) will be a recording of the live show, presented by Richard Hollingham and held in the Spiegeltent  (swing by if you’re around!). It rounds up the most exciting, interesting and intriguing things happening at the festival. There’s also the x-tra podcast, which will include some really exciting guests from the festival and there’ll be loads of updates on the blog from me and the rest of the fab x-change team.

You can listen to the podcast and read the blog on the podbean site (http://thexchange.podbean.com/) or follow us on twitter (#thexchange and tweets from @TheSiSTeam).

FLS Open Day

This Saturday 30th there is going to be a Community Open Day in the University of Manchester Michael Smith Building.  This happens to be the building where I spend most of my waking life attempting to get my experiments to work and my cells that grow in dishes  to behave (they rarely do). On Saturday, the atmosphere is going to be very different in here though*, as the Faculty of Life Sciences is opening the doors to the lab and inviting everyone to come in and have a look around. If you’re interested in science, what scientists get up to or just fancy a day out doing something different – come on down, the price is right (it’s totally FREE)!
Along side a chance to look round the labs and get a feel for the cutting edge research that is done here at The University of Manchester, there will be loads of fun activities including:

•    Painting with maggots
•    Making edible cells out of cookies
•    Meeting live amphibians
•    Learning how leeches are used in medicine
•    Finding out how the heart works

There’ll also be a tent for the lit’uns with creepy crawly crafts and face painting. The Michael Smith Building is number 71 on this map, or you can follow the footprints on the pavement from the Manchester Museum.

Hope to see you there…

*more fun

SciShow

My favourite thing on the internet at the moment definitely has to be SciShow. If you haven’t seen it, you’re missing out. This youtube station has a whole tonne of awesomeness in the form of informative, witty and surprising science videos.

Now I know what you’re thinking; ‘Liz you’re a scientist, why would you want to watch science videos in your free time?’ Well I’ll tell you why – I’m a geek. Only joking, it’s because scientists don’t know that much about science.

That might seem like a contradiction but what I mean is that, unless you’re a polymath, as a scientist you tend to know a lot about your specific bit of science but not that much about the other bits. Let’s not forget science encompasses how everything in the entire universe works. That’s quite a lot for anyone to learn and remember.  So although I know a quite a bit about cell biology and a fair amount of  general biology, the further you get away from what I research the less I tend to know. This is why I love SciShow, there’s so much interesting stuff on there about physics, geology, chemistry, the history of science and more.

Everything is explained really clearly and the presenter is very funny. So whether you’re a scientist, a teacher or someone who has a vague interest in science, I definitely recommend you give it a look. Even if you don’t enjoy it, you’ll probably learn something. But you probably will enjoy it.