Hey all!
What Public Lab activities would you recommend for a 30 min activity with a large group? With the goal of introducing folks to citizen science and giving them a memory of public lab that will stay with them. :)
As I mentioned to some of you at this most recent Barnraising, I work at an outdoor education place. In a few weeks, I'll have the chance to spend 30 minutes teaching the whole staff (of about 60 people) anything of my choice.
My go-to idea was the foldable spectrometer that folks could make themselves in groups of two, and use to investigate the spectra of everyday objects.
And then possibly have a demonstration station set up later with one of the more precise spectrometers and show how it can be used to look at the water from our pond and compare it to the spectral workshop database.
What can people add to this, or suggest as an alternative? I'm also going to apply for organizer event funding for the materials.
Thanks all!
I've done spectrometer building with people -- that works pretty well, although it's good to practice first. Balloon mapping is a bit much for 30 minutes.
You could also bring some UV lights and look at whether things fluoresce or not? Pond water might fluoresce due to vegetation or microbes, or due to oil. Could be interesting to compare -- you could use this nail polish hardening UV light which is UV powered: https://publiclab.org/notes/warren/03-10-2016/honlian-60s-led-nail-polish-hardener-various-led-fluorescence-updates
Is this a question? Click here to post it to the Questions page.
Reply to this comment...
Log in to comment