Medway PhD students travel to Lyon to deliver hands-on scientific workshops to secondary school students.
Medway PhD students Filip Kunc and Colin Moore travelled to Lyon from 7 – 11 December to deliver hands-on scientific workshops to secondary school students as part of the British Council competitively-funded ‘Science in Schools’ programme. Both students are studying for PhD’s in the Chemistry and Drug Delivery group under the supervision of Dr Vladimir Gubala and Dr Andrew Hall. Over the course of the week, the team travelled to 9 different schools to deliver 2-3 hour workshops through English.
The team conceptualised and delivered their interactive ‘Atmosphere in a Fishbowl’ workshop aiming to provide a fun, interesting perspective on role the Earth’s atmosphere plays in our daily life. Importantly, the workshops coincided with the historic COP21 climate change meeting in Paris. By performing experiments in fishbowls, the team demonstrated how specific physical, chemical and biological atmospheric are being influenced by the consequences of climate change and pollution.
Speaking about the week, Filip and Colin said: ‘Organising, describing and demonstrating experiments to children that do not speak English as a first language was a big challenge and made us focus on different styles of communication. However, their English levels were actually very good and made our workshops very interactive and fun. We are extremely grateful to the support provided by Carole Hemard and Irene Damour from the British Council. Without their help and organisation this week would not have been a success.’