Ambassador case study December 2009

Ambassador - Pat Kieran

 

Events - Highland Solar System Pilot and 'Washday Workshop'

This project is a natural extension of the Scottish Solar System, http://www.astro.gla.ac.uk/users/martin/sss/sss_intro.html and has taken the idea and localised it to the North coast of Scotland primary schools for the P4-P7 age group. This is a series of half-day workshops, devised by a partnership of Caithness British Science Association, UHI Environmental Research Institute, local Dunnet artist Joanne Kaar and the STEM ambassador network. During each workshop, schools along the coast from Lochinver in the west round to Helmsdale in the east will be invited to call themselves the Sun and choose another distant school as the furthermost planet, Neptune.

 

The pupils stand on a giant map of the Highlands and use a scale factor to work out where all the planets are with the solar system squashed down to the size of the North Highlands.  A series of exercises follow this, with objects from a space hopper to a marble being used to show the relative sizes of each planet and planet fact sheets that the pupils fill in and take away with them. The session is finished off with a painting exercise where, in their teams, the pupils paint a picture of life on their planet, based on what they have gleaned during the exercise. The tour starts in the New Year 2010.

A very successful pilot session was run at Castletown in November and many pictures can be found on the Caithness branch Facebook page:

 

Ambassadors involved:

From the Environmental Research Institute: Kathleen McDougall, Angela Squier, Sabine Freitag, Angus Jackson, Mark Shields, Martina Burtscher, Robbie Mutton and Kenneth Boyd.

From Dounreay Site Restoration Ltd: Pat Kieran

 

Funded by Scottish Government

 

This workshop was a partnership between Castlehill Heritage Centre, Caithness British Science Association and the North of Scotland STEM Ambassador network.

The two half-day sessions, with Castletown and Reay P4-P7 pupils, were the brainchild of Muriel Murray of the Heritage Centre who wanted to showcase the science and old technology behind fabrics, their transformation into clothes and their washing, mangling and ironing.

 

The science was presented by Joan Speed, a retired science teacher who explained, with hands-on examples, how soap used to be made from seaweed ash and animal fat, up to the modern day perfumed soap we use today. Heritage centre volunteers helped the pupils produce a small sample of weaving, mangle old woollen socks and carry pails of water. The session was finished off by Christine Stone and Celia McDougall of Melvich Gaelic Choir performing a waulking song with the children, passing cloth from hand to hand, simulating the process of “waulking the tweed”.

Many pictures can be found on the Caithness branch Facebook page:

 

Ambassadors involved: Gary Strachan and Pat Kieran from DSRL

Funded by Dounreay Site Restoration Ltd