Thursday morning dawned on a damp but unharmed Aspire resort. Typhoon Maria, thankfully, petered out before reaching the south-western edge of Taoyun city, and the day begins optimistically with various detectors reporting above 6 on the UV index. A bright-eyed Outreach team sets to work on last minute preparations: Tying string around table legs for DIY drying racks; converting bathrooms into acetate developing stations; labeling the lids of 44 tiny spray-bottles.
1:30 pm rolls around and the Madam Curie students file into a hall of pre-assembled cyanotype kits. After much shuffling about and donning of lab coats, Steve Ting takes to the mic like a rockstar in the world’s least likely venue.
“Hello!” He bellows
“Hello!” Reply the students
“That was terrible, do it again,”
Steve charms us through the history of the cyanotype print, along with instructions on how to develop their own images and the assurance that he is not, in fact, a chemist. With translation assistance from Jacqui Kao, the students are off, busying themselves with the combination and application of the photochemical solution. The developing pages are soon shuffled off into drying rooms and the real work starts: the students have to design their own images to develop.
We made the decision to provide our own acetate slides and leaves in case students didn’t feel engaged enough to make their own designs. This contingency was entirely unnecessary. Within minutes the Aspire hall was roaring with students drawing freehand, modifying the acetate slides, or tracing using their phones as lightboxes. I helped a student track down some cellotape so he could secure a palm frond in the shape of a mandarin character.
As the students persist with their designs, a teacher sneaks past the back of the hall holding something: she quietly finished up the process ahead of the students.
A teacher holds the first developed blueprint at the Madam Curie Science Camp 2018
Success. The UV index shows an 8, and the UV exposure stage can go ahead without resorting to metal halide lamps indoors.
With the experimental method confirmed, the rest of the afternoon is a blur of students crowding outside to expose their prints, develop them, and show them off proudly on social media.
You can check out the students’ amazing work, and an absolutely stoked outreach team in the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJ5JwIsSpo0
This blog will be updated periodically as the camp progresses, but you can also keep up with the team on facebook, twitter, youtube, and Instagram at the following URLs
Otago chemistry outreach page: https://www.facebook.com/chemotago/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvEnYDv1AdrA016_E86Fj0w
Twitter: https://twitter.com/chemotago
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chemotago/
Students at the Madam Curie Science Camp show off their newly developed blueprints
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