Lara Walsh’s Placement Report

While at the YSC, my main responsibility was learning to present the workshops they deliver, covering a range of topics within chemistry, biology and physics. I started as a lab technician, setting up experiments and equipment, before taking a supporting role as a presenter, delivering small sections of content, such as demonstrating how to use a micropipette. Towards the end of the internship, I had learned enough content and felt confident enough to lead present workshops to a range of primary and secondary school ages. I helped to generate more accessible content for SEN students too, creating PowerPoint slides and instruction sheets with more images, shorter sentences, clearer structures and frequent summaries. I would also deliver science demonstrations, often involving liquid nitrogen or blowtorches, which certainly improved my ability to safely handle potentially hazardous materials while presenting and engaging an audience!

I spoke about my own research in multiple talks to children between 10 – 17, adapting the content and style of presenting accordingly. I had the opportunity to think of physical demonstrations for my research, something which I had not done before and found very fun! I also spoke in the Faraday Lecture Theatre to multiple schools who had brought their Year 5 girls to learn more about scientists in action and took part in a panel-style Q&A session for them. I was involved in the Digital team at the Ri, scripting and presenting content for their social media channels – for example, I filmed a video dunking a cupcake in liquid nitrogen and smashing it for their 227^th birthday!

I developed several activities for the Ri space-themed Family Fun Day, researching the science behind them, building and assembling the kit required, writing risk assessments and explaining to our volunteers how to deliver them. This included creating an asteroid out of expanding foam and attaching it to a zip line for children to shoot with a nerf gun, with the aim of explaining the NASA Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission in 2022. At Family Fun Day I presented 3 mini-shows about rocket science, as well as being technician for the Energy Live shows we gave at the RAF Forces in STEM festival.

As I’m sure you can tell from this brief summary of what I got up to, it has been a very fun and enjoyable 3 months, often feeling like a mixture of being a primary school teacher and Blue Peter presenter!