Science Alive!
This year the SA branch for the Australian Society for Microbiology (ASM) once again had a booth at the 2020 Science Alive! science fair. Held at the Adelaide Showgrounds, this is the largest single interactive science exhibition in Australia and marks the beginning of National Science Week each year. This year was no exception, with over 40 booths, including SA’s leading Universities, bringing the best of science and technology to families and people of all ages in a variety of interactive, fun and educational ways. The event is held over three days, with the first day called STEM Day Out. This year over 3,600 students from over 50 schools attended and learned all about careers in science and microbiology. Over the weekend, over 9,000 people attended Science Alive! and our booth, learning all about microbiology!
The ASM booth is appropriately named ‘Microbiology Matters’ and has some key fun and interactive displays. Our famous ‘glow-in-the-dark bacteria’ (Vibrio fisherii) was donated by UniSA, and this year our dark room was double the size with the double the bacteria!
This year we included our blackboard again, for kids to share their thoughts around why they love science and why science is fun. Each year this becomes more popular, and this year we had to have a new blackboard for each day because it was filled at the end of each day!
Another important aspect of our booth is our ‘diagnostics’ table. Here we showcased some realistic agar plate images printed onto coasters, which allows the public to handle them safely and admire the different coloured microbes and agar.
These microbe coasters are hand-made by our very own Peter Traynor, and every single year we get asked if and how people can go about purchasing them. These microbe-coasters are a stroke of genius, as the top is made from a real petri dish lid so it feels similar to a plate, and has a bright, colourful array of images depicting various microbes growing on a variety of chromogenic agar plates. The results are not only visually pleasing, but also provide a safer platform to educate kids on microbes grown in diagnostics. In addition to the plates, microscopes were set up showing a healthy poo smear, as well as a smear from a wound. The kids were very excited to see real poo under the microscope, and to see what their infected scratch on their arm looks like under a microscope!
Our busiest booth attraction is by far the most enjoyed by our younger budding microbiologists. The ‘Build your own bacteria’ station has been a permanent fixture of our booth for years, and this was expanded over two tables. This year over 1000 play-doh ‘bacteria’ were made and ‘trapped’ in Petri dishes for kids of all ages to take home and enjoy. Each child receives 2 pieces of play-doh and is shown examples of common microbes and their shapes. Children are encouraged to design and build their own, unique bacteria in an empty petri dish. After they are finished, the bacteria is ‘trapped’ in the dish, sticky taped closed and they think of fun, creative names for their take-home microbes.
This year we had the opportunity to promote ‘Deadly Slime’, a fun, interactive and educational microbiology game for phones and tablets, created by our very own Dr Katharina Richter. This was a big hit with the kids, with many begging their parents to scan the QR code and download it to their phones to play.
For the first time ever, the ASM collaborated with another group who works in developing educational STEM programs for use in the Primary School curriculum. Booth organiser, Steph, connected with Dr Catherine Fargher through Women in STEMM Australia, and invited her and her company to take part in Science Alive! 2020. Catherine and ‘Dr. Egg STEM Adventures’ flew down from Macquarie University, Sydney to take part in the event. Catherine and our own Helena Ward connected instantly and will be working together with Steph to include Microbiology in Primary School curriculum in Australia!
In the past, the booth has given out 1,000 balloons each year promoting ‘Microbiology Matters’, but this year shifted away from balloons which have detrimental effects to the environment. Instead, we gave out 1,000 mega bubble wands, which were hand labelled with ‘I love microbiology’ and ‘I want to be a Scientist’ stickers! We gave out over 300 labelled packets of pencils and microbiology colouring-in sheets, as well as hundreds of ‘I love microbiology’ and ‘I want to be a Scientist’ stickers (made by a local Adelaide business) to our future generation of STEM leaders. We also worked closely with a local Adelaide woman to design crocheted scientist dolls to be raffled off throughout the weekend. We designed 10 diverse, crocheted scientists which were given away for free and were a big hit!!
We want to take this opportunity to thank all 30 + volunteers who helped this year, whether it involved making ‘glow-in-the-dark bacteria’, dropping off monitors, manning the booth during the day, or helping to pack up. We would not be able to do it without you all. If you are interested in volunteering again, or for the first time, please send an email through to the booth organiser, Steph Lamont-Friedrich at slamontfriedrich@gmail.com
This has been an incredibly tough year for us all, and we feel extremely grateful to be a part of this wonderful event again and look forward to being a part of Science Alive! 2021.