On Monday 8th September, Geoff, June, Louise, Ciaran, Laura and Pawel took DECIDE to Birmingham City Centre to attend the University of Birmingham’s ‘Think Corner’ event. This Pop-Up Shop, based in the Pavillions Shopping Centre, showcased the innovative research carried out by DECIDE. The event was in advance of the British Science Festival in Birmingham.
The day-long event provided a fantastic opportunity to tell the general public about the DECIDE project by means of a series of games, activities and videos. People were really keen to find out about the research being carried out as part of the Project.
In excess of 100 people (we stopped counting) attended and were particularly interested in fun activities when they found out that Cadbury chocolate was on offer as prizes!
Ciaran and Erin impressed visitors by showing them how to isolate DNA from strawberries. It was very messy but extremely fascinating. The end result was a blob of DNA, and some took away in a tube to hang on a necklace!
Geoff gave individuals some insight to the difficulty of finding a stem cell by shaking a box full of bean bag balls and asking them to find the exceedingly rare coloured beads.
Laura’s stand was very informative about immune cells. She created an educational game, matching pictures with descriptions of the function of different immune system cells. This proved very challenging, so Laura needed to give a bit of help to those keen to get their delicious prize!
Pawel and Joanna invited people to complete a jigsaw puzzle that showed the complete 3-dimentional structure of the active metabolite of vitamin D (Andrew’s picture). This proved to be a very popular stand as people were keen to learn about vitamin D.
All activities really demonstrated how science can be fun and for people all ages. DECIDE would like to thank Cadbury for discounted chocolate and for everyone who attended and helped on the day.