• Question: How do you plan on encouraging students to learn more about science?

    Asked by anon-187694 to Stewart, Miriam, Marton, Laura, Kathryn, David on 8 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: Miriam Hogg

      Miriam Hogg answered on 8 Nov 2018:

      I think the best way to get students (and the general public) into science is to humanise it!

      Lots of science is very technical and it makes people feel like they need a degree to understand it. Science often have special words that most people don’t understand so they just dismiss it as ‘too hard for me.’ A lot of the basic ideas behind these theories are actually very simple it just that people don’t know them, so they can’t then understand the science based upon it.

      The best way to encourage students is to show them that science isn’t some mystical being that you need to ‘get’. Everyone can enjoy science without needed to know every bit of maths and physics behind it. To do that we need to get scientists talking to students and the public about it and just making it something you can chat about.

      Lots of YouTube channels are doing that, Vsauce, and Scishow are two science shows that tell the general public about interesting ideas in science and explain the basic concepts behind them

    • Photo: Kathryn Coldham

      Kathryn Coldham answered on 8 Nov 2018:

      Great question! By taking part in lots of events like I’m a Scientist, so students get the opportunity to find out anything they want about the vast range of scientific jobs out there. I also deliver assemblies, talks and science activities at schools so students can learn extra science topics and meet a scientist in real life 🙂

    • Photo: Stewart Martin-Haugh

      Stewart Martin-Haugh answered on 8 Nov 2018:

      Great question!

      Hopefully humanising science a bit: whenever I go into schools I get really tricky questions (particularly about black holes, for some reason) and I am always honest and say that I don’t know. It’s not about knowing all the answers (like in an exam), it’s about finding out new answers.

    • Photo: Marton Olbei

      Marton Olbei answered on 9 Nov 2018:

      I think showing that scientists are just regular people is the best way to go – anyone can be a scientist, students shouldn’t be afraid of it!

    • Photo: Laura Kent

      Laura Kent answered on 9 Nov 2018:

      Like the other responses here, I just enjoy talking about science and the more you humanise it you change peoples view that its only old men in white lab coats with crazy hair that can do science. Science is for everyone! Its also important that science is actually part of our daily lives from baking to star gazing – even the laptop I’m currently using has so much technology in and that was all developed by scientists!

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