Chemistry Outreach In Malaysia Part 2: Parents
Back home in Dunedin, Chemistry Outreach team member Geoff Weal hosts a drop in science session called “Science for supper” for kids and their parents. The idea behind science for supper is for parents to share and understand the excitement that their kids get from science, so that they might better understand it and follow it up in the home. This year the team has their first opportunity to work with the parents of some of the local students, so they’re bringing science for supper to Malaysia.
In the covered central walkway of the Sarawak IPG, the outreach team sets up nine stalls- each showcasing a different experiment: The chemists man a cauldron of fire, create pH indicators from red cabbage, coach sodium acetate into stalagmites, generate vast quantities of PVA borax slime, and create artwork from cyanotypes and chromatography. The physicists create LED torches from scratch, use polarised lenses to explain how light behaves, and hold a modest disco in a darkened room. The day has an air of the carnival about it, and Geoffrey Weal walks tall between stalls, beaming like a ringleader.
The bog standard science-for-supper session is for both kids and parents, so there was some concern that the parent attendees wouldn’t be as enthusiastic without their children to stoke the enthusiasm. We needn’t have worried. Shrieks of laughter echo up and down the bustling atrium, and the figures leaving each crowded stall are eager to see what’s happening at the next.
The Chemistry Outreach team poses for a photo at the Sarawak IPG before their Science For Supper session
You can see Dave Warren and Geoff Weal talk about their experience, and give some background about science for supper at the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoGstSY5Dn8
This blog will be updated periodically as the trip 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/
Chemistry Outreach In Malaysia Part 1: Reunion
Another week, another flight itinerary. On Sunday the outreach team gathered at the Taipei airport to see off Jinaya, Savanna, and Steve before heading off to Kuching via Kuala Lumpur. Jinaya and Savanna were somehow bumped to an earlier flight than Steve. The plane carrying the rest of the outreach team was late, delaying our connecting flight. Ultimately everyone ended up in the correct country; Steve, Jinaya and Savanna made it home safe and sound while the remaining outreach team collapsed gratefully into their hotel in Kuching, Sarawak.
The differences between Taipei and Kuching are striking. Kuching is tiny in comparison to Taiwan’s tech giant mega-capital, but what it lacks in size it makes up for in flamboyant character. The city’s name is a homophone for the Malay word for cat “kucing”, although history is hay on whether or not this is a coincidence. Regardless, the city has embraced the soundalike, and is adorned with vast statues, murals, ornaments and shrines to its furry denizens.
The Otago Chemistry Outreach team and the Otago Optics Chapter pose in front of one of Kuching’s many cat statues
The city is bisected by the Sarawak river, where locals and tourists alike gather to eat under a rainbow of LED adorned vendors in view of the flora-form parliament building. The rest of the city is a wild mix of Indian, Chinese, Muslim, and colonial English architecture with infrastructure to match. The footpaths rise and dip between store fronts, morphing between tiles and concrete, and sometimes disappearing completely. To call it a city of contrasts would be to imply stark differences; Kuching is the city equivalent of a spilled bucket of lego, in the best possible way.
Kuching’s parliamentary building viewed across the river Sarawak
Cats and laksa vendors aside, Kuching also holds some people very dear to our heart: Matt, Petra, and Bianca of Otago’s Optics chapter. The optics chapter is a student run society that also participates in outreach, as well as community engagement and professional development. They will be joining us for two busy weeks in Malaysia as we meet with local schools and teachers’ colleges (“IPG’s”) to continue an international education outreach relationship that is entering its fourth year. You can learn more about the Optics Otago team at the following video: https://youtu.be/yXYng-MqgW0
This blog will be updated periodically as the trip 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/
Chemistry Outreach In Taiwan Day 6: Farewells
Friday was the last day of the Madam Curie Science camp, and also our last day with three of the Outreach team members: Steve, Jinaya, and Savanna.
Steve’s contribution to the trip was enormous, acting as coordinator and MC of the cyanotype printing workshop (as demonstrated in the previously blog entry). He’s also just bloody hilarious, and an asset to any outing.
Savanna and Jinaya, year 12 and year 13 high school students respectively, had a different role: they were attending the camp as students. They share a few words on their time at the Madam Curie Chemistry camp in the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wlXGweanRA
With the camp at Taiwan drawing to a close, we have set our sights on our next destination: Sarawak, Malaysia. The Outreach team will be spending two weeks their, working with students, parents, and teachers alike to promote international and interdisciplinary diversity.
This blog will be updated periodically as the trip 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/
The Otago chemistry outreach team poses with the helpers from the Madam Curie Chemistry Camp 2018 in Taipei
Outreach in Taiwan Day 5: Experimental
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
Outreach in Taiwan Day 4: Prep
Completing the chemistry quiz crossed off one of the team’s two major activities at the camp, the other being rather more involved in terms of preparation; tomorrow the team will facilitate 144 students designing, exposing and developing their own cyanotype photograms.
Cyanotype photography was developed (as the wonderful Steve Ting informs me) in 1842 by polymath Sir John Herschel, who used is primarily as a method for duplicating his notes. The key ingredients are ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide, which are mixed together and applied to paper. A negative image is this placed on top of the paper and exposed to UV light, turning the exposed areas of the paper blue, while those covered by the negative remain white.
This would be a straightforward demonstration for a class in a lab on a sunny day. Given that we have an amalgamation of many classes assembled in a hotel conference room during a typhoon, contingency plans are necessary. Should the UV index fall below 4 on the day, we may need to use a set of UV lights arranged as a backup. Despite prior testing, our UV light exposures aren’t behaving very well today however…
While a small crew continues testing the UV lamp option, the majority of the outreach team is busy cutting out acetate negatives, finding leaves for the students to use as images, and preparing volumes of the ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide solution. Shaun Mackay explains the plan in the following video, while the rest of us pray for sun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDjYlQPPGoE
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/
Steve Ting explains the cyanotype photography workshop to the Otago Chemistry Outreach team
Outreach in Taiwan Day 3: Quiz
In Jacqui Kao’s article “Science transcends cultures in Taiwan” she expresses the importance of showing the informal side of science to Taiwanese students, who are likely to experience academic pressures earlier in life than their kiwi counterparts. Each year at the Madam Curie camp, the Otago team holds a quiz intended to show just that.
“It’s a quiz- but it’s a fun quiz” Dave Warren explains to a packed hall of students, while standing in front of a projected image of himself riding a drift trike. The quiz commences with a combination of heavy chemistry and light trivia; “What is the total number of atoms in 13 molecules of potassium dichromate?”, “Who directed the Lord of the rings?”.
Within three rounds, the pretense of an academic competition is all but lost, and students are openly sharing answers, laughing, and teasing the outreach team. I spot Taieri high school students Savannah and Jinaya helping the surrounding students with the NZ trivia questions.
In addition to the informal elements of the quiz, the team has incorporated a Taiwan-specific cultural element: the students must write a poem about chemistry in couplet form. In the following video, Jacqui Kao explains the couplet form, and the significance of its inclusion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lel4EsOKHA
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/
Outreach in Taiwan Day 2: Aspire
The Otago chemistry outreach team has arrived at the Aspire resort where they’ll be lodging for the duration of the 2018 Madam Curie Science Camp. The camp is an annual event that gathers 144 of Taiwan’s brightest high school students together to participate in science workshops, hear talks from lauded academics (this year’s lineup includes 2 nobel laureates), and to be exposed to different cultural approaches to science communication (that’s us).
The role of the Otago team is, broadly, to expand the students’ understanding of what science is. Each year the team holds a chemistry quiz, but incorporates cultural questions and creative challenges. Each year the team facilitates a hands-on experiment- but the experiment takes place outside the lab. Their is an international preconception that science is a formal, sterile practice- and that preconception is harmful to privileged and underprivileged students alike.
You can take a peak into the outreach team’s travels (and their nightly homework club) at the following youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJ13N1I2Jh0&t=2s
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/
The outreach team stops by Taipei Maru theme park en route to the Aspire resort
Outreach in Taiwan Day 1: Arrivals
Yesterday, 17 members of the Otago Chemistry outreach team reunited in Taiwan to prepare for the Madame Curie Science Camp, taking place in Taipei. This is the team’s third year attending the camp, and the first in which all their luggage has arrived in the correct country. Third time’s a charm.
The team spent their first day staying at the inner-city Finder’s hotel, and soaking in the sights and smells of Taipei, before traveling south to the Aspire resort where they will be staying alongside over one hundred high school students and their helpers for the duration of the camp.
You can get a taste of the team’s first day in Taipei through their vlog here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6kIW0p6Bis&t=1s
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/
Members of the Otago Chemistry Outreach Team reunited in Taipei to attend the Madame Curie Science Camp 2018
Science transcends cultures in Taiwan
An article about our involvement in the Madam Curie Chemistry Camp in Taiwan was published in Science on 1st June 2018.
Contact: Jacqui Kao, ScienceknowledgeLtd@gmail.com
Sharing chemistry with Māori students
An article about some of our involvement with the University of Otago Science Wānanga program was published in Science
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