World Science Festival

Although the Brisbane World Science Festival may have been back in March, the memories of the day are still with the 40 lucky students who attended the event on Thursday 21 March. World Science Festival has fast become the Asia-Pacific destination for exploring and celebrating the entanglement of science. Now in it’s fourth year, the continued success of this popular event affirms Brisbane as an innovative city with strengths in science, technology, mathematics and engineering. World Science Festival Brisbane brings together world leading scientists; from astrophysicists and Chiefs of Science, to NASA astronauts and national icons, each one offered thought-provoking conversation, brave new ideas and sparked stimulating debate on some of the biggest challenges facing humankind.

For the 40 students with a passion for science, their journey began with a presentation from the National Youth Science Forum: Five Minutes With Your Future. Students were given five minutes to ask questions to Australia’s next generation of upcoming scientists , such as what a future in science looks like. From chemists with an element of surprise, to humorous biologists to electrical engineers with big hertz…hearts, sorry.

After meeting with the volunteer university students, our PBC students split up to get the best of both worlds. While half attended the Pioneers in Science Brisbane with Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, the remainder of the group moved to the Queensland Museum’s Biodiversity Laboratories to attend the Museum Curator’s Apprentice: Terrestrial Biodiversity workshop. In the Museum Curator’s Apprentice, a team of Queensland Museum biologists introduce the new ‘apprentices’ to Queensland’s remarkable biodiversity, with the focus on arachnology. By sharing their scientific expertise and passion for collections, these biologists revealed how old and new technologies have together, dramatically changed the sciences of taxonomy.

Meanwhile at the State Library of Queensland, the remainder of the students were given the rare opportunity to interview a renowned scientist live on stage. During the interview-style discussion, pioneer Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg shed insights into his trailblazing career path, and answered questions from the next generation of STEM professionals. Ove Hoegh-Guldberg is a Professor of Marine Science at the University of Queensland and studies the effects of global warming and ocean acidification on coral reefs. He undertakes game-changing research to find collaborative, high-impact solutions to address several of the most pressing and serious challenges facing humanity worldwide, including climate change, food security, clean energy and population growth.

To end the day off, our PBC students got to catch a rare glimpse of hatching turtles in their incubation chambers and their first moments of life. It was a turtely awesome experience and one to remember. This initiative was designed in collaboration with internationally renowned herpetologist Colin Limpus and Queensland Museum Senior Curator of Reptiles and Amphibians, Biodiversity Program and Chari of the Animal Ethics Committee Patrick Couper.

Being one the world’s most engaging, exciting and educational science events, PBC students were lucky to have been given the amazing opportunity to explore this ever-expanding, global endeavour.

Erin Woods, Student

Stem Ambassador Conference

The day started with St. Stephens College informing us of what they do as a school to promote STEM. Their main aspect was their STEM tour where they go from school to school demonstrating a variety of STEM aspects such as hydrogen bubbles.

We then moved onto creating some absolutely terrible ideas. The goal was to improve on a bad idea into a STEM applicable idea. Our very own bad idea was to let the Year 7’s have free roam of a science expedition with access to countless different experiments with no limits or restrictions – how horrible would that be? Another fancy idea was to make a dissolvable straw. We were allocated another group’s idea, which was dropping sodium into a pool. We changed the bad idea into something more applicable within a school environment, where we test different sodium compounds such as sodium carbonate and observing the reaction they would have in water.

Nearing the end of the day we went to the Cremorne Theatre to see Dr Karl Kruszelnicki discuss where science will take the world in future years. The way he presented was entertaining, engaging and filled with jokes. He talked about several different jobs within certain areas including genetics, engineering, basic physics, computer science and the environment. My personal favourite was the explanation of basic physics; Kruszelnicki focused on the Hadron Collider. His application of diagrams and sciences allowed for the audience to easily understand the benefits of the collider. The two main things I took away from this small part of the presentation was how interesting ionised particles colliding into each other at the speed of light was and also how much I love physics. Other than that, his talk on CRISPR was very interesting but concerning in terms of ethics. Kruszelnicki was an amazing presenter to listen to and has built a solid pathway I’d like to take in my future.

This photo was taken on the day (Kirsten McGilvray (STEM Ambassador Coordinator), Reef Thompson, Jarreth Bisley, Isabelle Richters, Jaime Pryor, Erin Woods)

Jarreth Bisley, Year 11, STEM Ambassador

Science Club

Science Club starts up again Week 2, Thursday 2 May. Meet in O1 lab in lunch 1. Bring your lunch. This term’s theme is ‘Microworld’, where you get to use various microscopes to investigate those things we can’t see with the naked eye. We hope to see you there. Bring your lunch.

Middle School Science

This term Year 7 students are conducting an investigation on forces. Students are required to construct and test a balloon powered vehicle to investigate how forces affect motion. Towards the end of the term we will be running our annual Balloon Powered Vehicle Challenge. Each Year 7 class will nominate a representative team to compete and the supreme car building team of 2019 will be recognised and awarded with a certificate and prizes.