Summer Scientists.

Today A had taken the day off work, so that he could come along to the Summer Scientist event at Nottingham University School of Psychology.  The girls and I went last year and really enjoyed it and we were all keen to go again.  Downstairs in the atrium there are various activities to choose from, which each cost a token.  You are given a token to start off with when you arrive and then you earn more tokens, by going upstairs to do a different activity (which contributes to the research they are doing there), then you come back down until someone else invites you to go and do another activity upstairs.  Last year one of the girls, M, always wanted me with her for the upstairs activities and the other, K, didn't, which worked out rather nicely.  This year neither of the girls wanted accompanying, so A and I had a look at the posters which explain the activities that they are doing upstairs and what they are trying to find out.

Downstairs, K & M made a beeline for a particular activity, which does look very cool!  By activating a fan at the base of a tube, using the power of the brain, you can make a ping pong ball hover in the air.

I love the look of concentration!

K's turn.

 K & M did tell us a bit about what they got up to upstairs, so mostly we were able to work out from the posters what they had been doing related to.  Some of the research seemed to be trying to determine at what point particular skills or ways of thinking were acquired, other was about how these things develop.  K, for example, did one activity about recognising emotion from different facial expressions.  M did one which was concerned with the difference between children and adults in understanding distorted or incomplete speech with and without the visual help of someone's face (apparently children are better at understanding without visual help than adults).  Both girls did something that involved questions about their perception of themselves as regards their emotions and personalities, which was to be compared to a similar questionnaire that I filled in.  There was one to do with recognising landmarks when finding your way and comparing that to a map, when the landmarks were in useful places such as junctions or otherwise.

Downstairs M found that her balance when standing on a wobbly disc with her eyes closed was remarkably good, managing about 25 seconds, which was the longest of any of the 7-11 year olds.  K seemed to spend a bit more time upstairs (it just happens to depend when people are free and needing another volunteer) and although she also had a go on the wobbly disc and a second go with the floating ping pong ball activity, she ended up with 5 tokens that she hadn't had a chance to 'spend' downstairs.  M decided that it wasn't fair that the adults didn't get tokens, so she shared hers with A and me and we all had a go at throwing bean bags into pockets with different points, first normally and then with special goggles on that shift everything a foot or so to the right in your vision.  Even when you know you need to compensate for this, it's really rather tricky!



A's turn.

All in all a really good afternoon and we will look forward to a third visit there next summer.