Successful applicants in round 2011B
Mr M Paterson
Pfilm Ltd
Colliding Particles - 'Endgame'
Award: £10,000
At the current rate of research, it is likely that the existence or not of the Higgs Boson will be proved or disproved to an acceptable degree of certainty in the summer of 2012. Pfilm will produce 2 final episodes to the STFC Science in Society Large Award funded 'Colliding Particles' series of films to cover the historic final stages in the hunt for the Higgs.
The films will continue the well-received structure and narrative of the previous films in the series. All films and teaching resources (link opens in a new window) produced so far by the project are viewable. The films document the individual and collaborative research of the 3 principal characters, and use their work to tell the wider story of the LHC itself and the hunt for the Higgs Boson. The films have an informal approach, engaging the audience in the human story of being a researcher in particle physics. The films document the scientific process at work, allowing them to be used successfully in the classroom to support the ‘How Science Works’ strand of the national curriculum.
Dr R Wheldon-Williams
National Eisteddfod of Wales
CERN @ Eisteddfod - Particle Physics Exhibition
Award £8,500
The general objective of this award is to arrange a successful Science Festival within the National Eisteddfod in the Vale of Glamorgan 2012, as in the case of 2005-2011.
A specific objective is to arrange a themed exhibition and activities on Particle Physics as a major part of the festival, the Eisteddfod is held annually in August and is the premier cultural festival of Wales, usually attracting over 160,000 people each year with attendance at the Science Exhibition in excess of 27,000 over 8 days for each of the past 3 years.
This project aims to promote and raise interest and excitement in Particle Physics through the medium of Welsh and English, update a successful model particle accelerator, showcasing the greatest experiment ever built, inspire young people (11-16) to take up opportunities in STEM and to consider a career in Particle Physics and Space Science. Some of the project’s other aims are to make science accessible to pupils in underprivileged and remote areas in Wales, attract people to the results of the LHC experiment in a way that is novel, exciting and accessible and to stimulate thinking and promote a dialogue with the public, on Particle Physics and Astronomy.
Miss N Ireland
Manchester Museum of Science and Industry
Out of this world - scientific adventures in space
Award £4,000
Out of this world is an exciting and innovate strand of events, designed to engage and inspire families and the general public with astronomy and space science, showcasing cutting-edge (STFC funded) local research. Aiming to:
- Produce a hands-on day of programming for families, which will include workshops, talks, a new planetarium show and craft activity, including "knit a solar system"
- Produce a space-themed variety night for adults who would not normally attend science related events. Events would include a stand-up comedy show by comedian Helen Keene, and Bright Club style presentations from local researchers about their cutting-edge work in the field, and new planetarium show
- Pilot the mesmerising "The Spaceship of Carl Sagan's Imagination"
- Inspire families and the general public with astronomy and space science, providing a platform for conversation and debate
This programme of events will take place during Manchester Science Festival, which aims to provide an exciting and innovative programme of events to inspire and engage the general public with science, and encourage young people to consider a career in science.
Dr P Lindgren
University of Glasgow
The Solar System Rocks
Award £4,438
This project will develop a new workshop entitled “The Solar System Rocks” containing high impact interactive activities, posters describing current science questions and handouts giving more information and suggestions for follow-up activities and will be delivered a workshop at the 2012 Edinburgh and Glasgow Science Festivals. At the workshops, key audiences such as the science-inclined public and young people and their families will be targeted. Estimated audience numbers are 500-1000 at the Edinburgh Science Festival and 250 at the Glasgow Science Festival. In addition, the project will undertake five ‘pop-up museum’ events at various localities around Glasgow (e.g. the Braehead Shopping Centre) and thereby engage non-traditional audiences with STFC science.
Some of the aims of this project are to promote Solar System science by highlighting and explaining to public audiences current important questions including the possibility of water and life on Mars and the origin and evolution of asteroids and comets, provide forums for the public to discuss topical science issues with front-line STFC funded researchers, enable the public to experience how STFC-funded science is undertaken by providing hands-on and practical demonstrations. In addition, it will encourage young people to study STEM subjects at school and University by showing the importance, applications and fun of physical sciences and assist the public to learn more about planetary science by providing them with resources to take away, and with suggestions for where more information can be obtained.
Dr MA Thompson
University of Hertfordshire
A Travelling Exhibition of the Herschel Hi-GAL Milky Way
Award £6,550
The aim of this project is to bring the Hi-GAL vision of the Milky Way to the general public by staging an exhibition of the Hi-GAL images. This will be done in an innovative way, by creating a walking tour of the Milky Way in the form of a 50m long floor display that can be shown in a variety of venues. This will bring the science behind Herschel and its beautiful images to a wide audience which would not normally get to appreciate them, by placing the floor display in venues that attract a wide spectrum of visitors.
A 50m floor display of the Herschel Hi-GAL Milky Way will be produced, with supporting pop-up stands on the Herschel mission and the science behind the survey. A series of exhibitions of the Hi-GAL Milky Way floor display at venues around the UK (including cathedrals, museums and galleries) will then be held.
Dr G Provan
University of Leicester
The Planeterrella – Space Lessons Pack
Award £3,630
Previously STFC have funded ‘The Planeterrella - the aurora at our fingertips' This is a unique scientific experiment, which reproduces the aurora in a laboratory vacuum chamber and also demonstrates how magnetized stars and planets interact with each other. This award will enable the award holders to produce lesson plans and additional resources which will allow the Planeterrella to be presented within the context of the national curriculum. It will inspire, enthuse and educate school pupils and their teachers about the Earth's near-space environment using the Planeterrella as an 'inspirational hook'. It will also encourage a sustainable dialogue between staff and students at the University of Leicester and local schools and colleges.
Four lesson packs for Key Stages 2-5 will be produced, each one containing a detailed lesson plan, additional equipment such as magnets and compasses and teachers’ guides which will be sent to the school in advance of the Planterralla equipment.
Mr GH Watson
Childrens Radio UK Ltd
Deep Space High – the school for everything about space
Award £8,750
This award is for a series of 20 audio features exploring space and space developments, which will be broadcast as features on Fun Kids (which broadcasts on DAB digital radio in South East UK and across the UK online) and available to listen again and download. Audio will also be available as an educational resource for schools and additional complementary material to support each feature on the Fun Kids website, with images, videos, downloads and links to suitable third parties will also be available.
The features will be informative and inspirational in style, will be written for a core child audience aged 9 to 12 year olds, although from experience we know that both younger and older children will also listen to the features, as well as parents and carers. They will be presented by created characters set in Deep Space High, a cool space school for kids from all over the Universe. The presentation style will inspire space and science as subjects for children to take a greater interest in as their school careers develop. The aim is to help make children (and their parents) understand more about space – what it is, famous discoveries and exploration today, focussing on the projects that the UK is involved with, and inspire them to find out more. Topics covered will include what is space, developments in space, life in space and future space travel.
Ms A Tyndall
Edinburgh International Science Festival
Invisible Worlds – Making the Invisible Visible
Award £10,000
For the past two years, the Edinburgh International Science Festival has staged large-scale photographic exhibitions as part of its world-class programme. Located in St Andrew Square in the heart of Edinburgh, this high-profile outdoor photography exhibition will provide an engaging, awe-inspiring interaction with science for a large, general public audience, through an exhibition of large-scale, high-impact images, it will showcase the ways in which advances in science and technology can – through cutting-edge imagery techniques – reveal some of the wonderful sights normally hidden to us.
Free, open and accessible, the exhibition will provide a valuable platform for reaching new audiences. It will showcase some of the vastness, complexity and beauty of science in fields such as biomedical imaging and astronomy. In doing so it will draw attention to the techniques, technologies and research that make it possible to glimpse these otherwise invisible worlds. From the micro to the macro, from the majesty of nature to the wonder of the workings of the human body, a variety of cutting-edge imaging techniques reveal sights invisible to the naked eye. Micrograph and microscope; satellite and telescope; x-rays, MRI and CAT scans; these technologies provide us with a window onto worlds that are normally hidden from us, and in doing so enable us to glimpse everything from the majesty of the solar system to the wondrous workings of the human body.
Dr JA Wilson
University of Birmingham
Revitalising the cosmic ray trigger for a transportable spark chamber
Award £1,507
The University of Birmingham’s Spark Camber has been in use for several years. It is regularly taken to schools, exhibitions and Open Days etc and this award will ensure that the cosmic ray trigger is refurbished to enable the university to continue to transport and demonstrate it effectively, to widely varying venues and to as large an audience as possible.
Mrs LC Long
University of Birmingham
Cascading Physics Ideas using examples from particle physics at CERN
Award £3,900
The award holders will invite A Level and GCSE students nationwide to prepare, with support from their teachers and e-mail support from students/staff at the University, a short, stimulating video, using examples from particle physics experiments to introduce or show examples in context, of basic curriculum physics principles. These videos should be suitable for use in classroom activities. The topics will be chosen from a suggested list, or the students can submit their own ideas for approval. The videos will last 3-4 minutes and will be aimed at a particular age group and curriculum topic. Submitted entries will be watched by a team comprising of researchers, teachers and PG students, who will judge them against specified criteria, choosing up to 6 winners, who will receive prizes of up to £400 to help finance a trip to CERN.
In addition the winning videos will be uploaded onto the Birmingham Particle Physics You Tube site, where they will be available for general access. The winning teams and their teachers will be invited into the University on an Open Day occasion in June/July 2012 for a celebration lunch, to include showing of the winning videos, presentation of prizes, discussions with staff and various other activities, as well as an opportunity to look at all the displays of research and courses set up for Open Day.
Dr P Roche
University of Glamorgan
Supporting GCSE Astronomy in the UK
Award £5,546
This award will fund a teacher training programme, involving face-to-face workshops supported by online tutorials, run by a highly experienced delivery team made up of experts in astronomy education from the National Schools’ Observatory and the Faulkes Telescope Project. In addition, an online booklet will be produced by the team with support from the staff at Astronomy Now magazine, which will support the GCSE Astronomy curriculum and be freely available to UK schools.
A teacher training programme to support the ESERO-UK CPD goal for UK teachers will be developed, engaging them with space/astronomy in the classroom, and in this case specifically targeting the GCSE Astronomy qualification. Four full day GCSE Astronomy teacher training courses for UK secondary school teachers will be held and twilight "taster" sessions to talk to teachers who might be interested in taking up the course in future will be provided.
Dr SJ Montgomery
W5
Exploring the Invisible – Infrared and Astronomy
Award £9,700
This award will enable the development of a 30 minute workshop for school pupils explaining infra red as part of the electromagnetic spectrum and how it is used within astronomy. It aims to develop the workshop for school pupils to explore Infrared, the work of Herschel, how he found Infrared and how it has many exciting and useful applications. Its other uses from medical, police and security work, to detect heat loss in buildings and to monitor the Earth's weather will also be illustrated but the main focus will be to explore its use in astronomy. It will link the use of infra red in common devices such as remote controls and laser tag to its use in science.
The project will also create a small learning zone linked to infra red and astronomy as an introduction to a laser tag game at W5 and refurbish and relocate the planet Odyssey exhibit to a permanent position in the learning Zone.
Dr AJ Steele
University of Oxford
Accelerate! Toolkit
Award £9,629
Accelerate! is a highly successful particle and accelerator physics demonstration lecture aimed at secondary school pupils and the general public. It was developed at the University of Oxford during a two-year programme, funded by a previous STFC Science in Society Small Award, which saw it delivered to a varied audience of 5000 people. This project will develop an informational ‘Accelerate! toolkit’ which would allow universities to host their own Accelerate! programme, or help schoolteachers make the link between the science curriculum, classroom demonstrations and particle accelerators.
Resources will be created allowing production of a modular, 20–60 minute live interactive science show by universities and outreach groups. Additionally these resources would be usable by teachers to enhance similar demonstrations in the classroom, and link them to particle and accelerator physics. These resources will comprise 10 high-quality five-minute instructional videos aimed at science communicators, and a further 10 demonstration videos aimed at students or the general public. It will also create illustrated written resources accompanying each video, containing detailed explanations of the science behind them and the relevance to particle and accelerator physics, relevant mathematics, and follow-up exercises for use in the classroom. These resources will be published to a dedicated section of the Oxford Physics website under a Creative Commons license to encourage widespread use and reuse and at least one training day for universities, including the SEPnet consortium, with a target of 20 attendees will be provided.
Mr S Jago
Techniquest
Mars
Award £4,758
The aim of this project is to develop a new bilingual planetarium show for public audiences on the subject of "Mars", to engage new public audiences in astronomy and current STFC research. Techniquest has the only fixed site planetarium in Wales and is a 30 seat educational dome that enables them to show digital projections of the night sky. This award will produce a full-dome digital show on Mars. The show will be designed to provide a stimulating and immersive public engagement experience that makes full use of a new digital projector and will inspire new audiences to be interested and motivated in astronomy and cosmology. The show will be developed bilingually (English/Welsh) to enable it to meet the needs of the Welsh public audiences.
The show will last for approximately 40 minutes, consisting of a digital presentation on Mars followed by a tour of the night sky which will be presenter-led. Moving images, animation and music will be used to create a show that maximises the potential of the new projector and enables new audiences to explore the Red Planet. The show will enable the audience to take a virtual trip to Mars and tour it from an exploration rover and the audience will observe and increase its awareness of some of Mars’ distinct and interesting features. The show will be followed by a star tour. For the majority of beneficiaries this will be their first visit to a planetarium and it will provide an immersive and exciting way to engage them into astronomy. Any cross-over between topics within the show and the current night sky will be made explicit. Links to the myths around Mars will be used to explore the constellations. The show will highlight where and when Mars will be visible in the night sky.
Professor BC Allanach
University of Cambridge
Guerilla Science 2012
Award £5,000
Guerilla Science intends to build on their previous activities at music festivals and events where science is unexpected. It will further establish their work in the festival environment and create events for other non-science environments. In 2012 the aim is to bring science-orientated discussion, debate, art, music, experiments, demonstrations and talks to the Secret Garden Party in Cambridgeshire in July 2012 and one other UK music festival. Outside of the music festival season they will develop and run events in order to test out new elements of the program and provide training for participants.
In the Guerilla Science tent, using a blend of discussion, debate, live experiments, talks and performances, Guerilla Science aims to communicate various aspects of science and technology to a general public audience. Activities and events featuring STFC relevant content will be conducted under the overarching theme of Exploring the Universe. Event content will primarily include events inspired by quantum physics and the LHC, space science, astronomy and maths. Within this overarching theme they will seek to program more events themed around solar maxima, cosmic microwave background and the formation of galaxies and stars. The informal atmosphere is facilitated by hands-on experiments and activities as well as science-orientated music, art, films and documentaries.
Dr SM Wilkins
University of Oxford
Astronomy Playing Cards
Award £3,250
This award will facilitae the production of 1000 sets (each set contains 5 decks totatling 125 cards per set) of astronomy themed cards. The sets will be distributed to schools in Oxfordshire and those offering Astronomy GCSE free of charge, as well as being used during public outreach events organised by Oxford Physics. They will introduce school children (<14 years) to various astrophysical phenomenon as well as give them a wider understanding of the scale of the Universe. Each individual pack (25 cards with a common theme) can be used to play various comparison games where players compare properties of objects they hold to determine a winner. The primary aim of this part of the activity is to develop knowledge of the various astrophysical phenomenons (planets, moons, stars, nebulae, galaxies etc.) and an intuition of astrophysical properties (luminosity, eccentricity etc.) and units (e.g. astronomical units, solar masses, light years etc.)
Mr PR Winfield
INTECH
Mission Control, Exploring the Frontiers of Modern Astrophysics
Award £8,000
The purpose of this project is to deliver an interactive exhibit at the INTECH Science Centre & Planetarium for large-scale, public engagement activities in astrophysics. The target is to implement an appropriate suite of high-level visualisation tools for content delivery over common mobile platforms, e.g. smartphones and tablets, by exploiting cutting-edge high-performance computational infrastructures, e.g. desktop grids. The plan is to initially employ an area in the exhibition at the INTECH Science Centre & Planetarium for showcasing a number of grid-enabled visualisation technologies based on VisIVO, a high-performance environment for astrophysical visualisation.
The ultimate vision for the proposed exhibit is to provide a foundation for developing AstroExplorer, an on-line multiplayer computer game involving several other science centres in the UK for very large-scale, public engagement networks in astrophysics. Once the technology has been developed for the proposed exhibit it will be made freely available to other science centres in the UK via the Association for Science & Discovery Centres (ASDC) network. Other science centres will then be able to construct similar exhibits allowing seemless connection to AstroExplorer simply by adding their own hardware and computing resources. The ultimate aim of the proposed project is to inspire young people about astronomy and cosmology by offering them access to highly specialised astronomical datasets and tools to which they would not normally be exposed and motivating them to undertake visual discovery journeys. This includes presenting modern astrophysical datasets in innovative ways that are accessible, intriguing and enjoyable.
Dr HF Heath
University of Bristol
Cosmic Balloons
Award £6,400
The Bristol Balloon fiesta is a major annual event held at the Ashton Court Estate in Bristol and attracts about 500,000 visitors every year in August. This award will fund a stall at the Fiesta and arrange a competition for 6th formers with the prize being a trip in a hot air balloon. There will be a cosmic-ray detector in the balloon with live telementry to the stall on the ground. It is hoped to have sufficient bandwidth to allow a simple bi-directional video link. Some of the materials produced will also be used at other events in particular "Discover 2012" which is a biennial event where the University of Bristol takes over the central area of a local shopping centre to "sell" science.
The award will enable the hire a marquee, production of display materials including a "cosmic ray doorway" entrance. The university’s spark chamber will also be used. This nature of this event is such that audiences who would not normally attend a science event will be reached where the main aim the project is to use the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the discovery of cosmic rays to promote to a general Bristol audience the significance of cosmic rays and the contribution to cosmic ray research made by local Nobel Prize winner Cecil Powell.
Mr B Madison
RAL Space
Mars Mission Control @your School
Award £10,000
The project would use the Mars-like test area and the outreach robots at RAL Space to host remote workshops to schools across the country. The schools would receive an introduction pack or an introductory webinar before they could take control of the Mars rovers and with the use of the on-board camera, other sensors and actuators, complete educational missions. Schools only need a computer with a web-browser, and they can control a real robot on "Mars". The rovers will be placed in the Mars-like test area and images from the on-board camera will be shown in the control interface. Students will then have to complete the task described in the activity (e.g. Sample return, exploration of a specific area or cave, repair equipment. Once they completed the task (with directions provided in the activity pack) the teacher can review what the class have achieved and learned during the activity.
Some of the aims of the project are to build two new rovers, produce an introduction pack or video tutorials for activities and hold some school sessions to test the activities. The award will also mean that the team can set up an infrastructure at RAL Space which can be used to deliver educational and engaging hands-on activities to any school in the UK remotely with minimal time required from technical staff, deliver an interactive web-site which can be used by schools using any web-browser (including the ones on smart-phones and tablets).
