Outreach begins

We had our first school visit this morning. Pete, Dave, Sheryn and myself met at 9am, and headed out in my car (now known as the nerd mobile), where we entertained about 30 or so year 10's for just over an hour. I must admit, the nerves were a little shaky as we entered the school. It really is quite a different world when you step inside a school. My flash backs began almost immediately. Not sure what it was that provoked the flash backs - the smell of lino floors perhaps ? or maybe the sound of students referring to teachers as sir and miss ? Whatever it was, I wasn't completely ready for it, and it took me a little time to settle down.

The school had the classic look. Kind of like a prison, but with brighter colours. We were lead through a maze of corridors to the science lab where we were to perform. Thankfully we had about 20 minutes to setup everything, so we were well and truly ready to go when the students arrived. Thankfully we scored a very friendly, slightly cheeky but well behaved bunch, and the show went without a hitch.

Having done two full dress rehearsals prior to this in front of expert science communicators, I thought we were pretty well prepared, and in general, I think we were. It was, however, quite an eye opener to see just how random some students can be with their questions. I got asked everything from "do you think a low resolution image that gradually increases to high res would help resolve the distance ambiguity" to "do you think robots will rule the world" .. to which I respectively answered "no" and "probably".

So we managed to survive our season opener, and certainly learnt a lot more from this than any rehearsal prior (which adds to my growing skepticism about the worth of "expert advice" dished out by science communication specialists sometimes - but that's a rant for another day).

We have five more shows scheduled in the next three weeks. The next one is Monday