Real brains and
crafty handprint neurons for British Science Week
In mid-March British Science Week took off with more chaos
and craziness than ever before with SITraN staff taking part in public talks,
Discovery Night and school visits.
The SITraN team visited two local schools where the children
patiently sat and listened to a talk about how the brain and spinal cord
function to keep us living, moving and thinking. Following this the children visited 6
different workstations: the human brain, investigating the brain, senses,
handprint neurons, real brains, and motor skills.
At ‘the human brain’ workstation
children spent time discussing brain regions and creating brain hats, which are
always a big hit.
The iconic microscope was used for
‘investigating the brain’ and children looked at real brain slices under the
microscope. However, it appears that
many of the children were more interested in how the microscope worked than the
brain tissue underneath it!
The children explored their senses
using puzzles at the ‘senses’ workstation by smelling the contents of jars,
doing jigsaws blindfolded, guessing the contents of boxes based on touch and
exploring vision with optical illusions and braille.
Plenty of glitter was spread about at
the ‘handprint neurons’ workstation, where children used their handprints,
pom-poms and pipe cleaners to design and decorate a neuron to take home.
The ‘real brains’ workstation produced plenty of exclamations
of “eeew!” as the children looked at real animal brains and discussed their
levels of intelligence alongside MRI images of the brains. At one point, whilst holding up a bird brain,
a researcher asked, “whose brain do you think this is? It has wings…” to which a child replied “the
tooth fairy?”
Finally, the ‘motor skills’ workstation explored reaction
skills and reflexes with games such as catching the ruler before it falls and
trying not to blink when cotton wool is thrown at your eyes whilst wearing
safety goggles.
It was great to see the children skipping out of school
wearing brain hats, waving neurons and exploring their newfound knowledge of
the brain! All-in-all much fun was had and lovely feedback was received from
the schools for the second year running.
There’s plenty more outreach before the next British Science
Week including an outreach afternoon in SITraN on Saturday 23rd
April!
The SITraN team.
