Questacon SciNight - "Good Vibrations"
We presented the memory wire and the polystyrene ball and pipe cleaner activities, as well as a SYBR Safe stained agarose DNA gel and a plate of bacteria expressing various fluorescent proteins.
“We all had a fantastic time presenting our project, and seeing all of the other exhibits and presentations that were being held throughout the evening. It was great to see how many people came to the event and were excited about all of the science-themed exhibits on offer. I was amazed at how many people were interested in the work we presenting, particularly given that we were competing for attention against dazzling light displays, animal eye dissections, and air hockey-playing robots!
It was pretty challenging to gauge the science literacy of all those who visited our stall, so we aimed to present our work with the use of simple, but clear analogies that we hoped everyone could understand! Throughout the night we presented our work to well over 100 people, with many asking questions for 15 minutes or longer – a fantastic level of engagement. It was great to show people the sorts of things that we can achieve with genetic engineering and how we can aim to address some of the ethical concerns many people have with this technology.” (Conor)
“People came from a range of backgrounds, from a guy who’d worked in IT for years (but had a keen interest in genetics) to a second year medical science student. We had to gauge how much science people knew and tailor our explanation to that. We’d come up with a spiel before the event but throughout the night gradually refined it, such as the order in which we presented the activities, the bits of the explanation to leave out and the jargon and analogies that we used. Everyone enjoyed seeing the fluorescent DNA and proteins and were quite impressed by the logic of how we could use our split protein system to cut DNA! People asked us questions like how could our system be applied to treat disease and what would happen if recombinant DNA technology turned humans into zombies… It was a great atmosphere and a lot of fun, but very exhausting!” (Janelle)
“Amazing! I learnt something that I had never thought possible 11/10” (Quote from Questacon visitor)
