The Cambridge Science Festival
Meera - This week saw the start of the Cambridge Science Festival. So I've come along to one of the main event days which is Science on Saturday. I've kicked things off today by visiting the plant sciences department and with me to tell me more is Jim Haseloff from the plant sciences department here at the University of Cambridge.
Jim - The theme of this year’s science festival is diverse science, looking at diversity in development, diversity in physiology, diversity in properties of plants. Within the tent, we’ve got quite a range of activities and diverse plants, there’s a supply of seed and flowers, synthetic biology and application to engineering of plants both now and the future. Essentially, thinking of how living systems work and how you might tweak or adjust them in the same way you might adjust a plant to produce more drug for drug production or to improve production for bio-energy or for food production for example.
Meera - The point of the festival is to make things a bit hands-on and interactive. So, what are the key hands-on activities that you've got here today because I've seen children looking in microscopes and handling mushrooms..?
Jim - They range from just the observation of biological systems or looking at fungi and plants and algae through to a giant flower that children can crawl into and that giant flower is full of nectar in the form of sweets, and they have pollen then full of glitter, and the kids dress up in bee suits and crawl into the flower and do the job a bee does essentially.
Meera - Actually that’s just behind us now I think and it’s quite popular.
Jim - It’s extremely popular. And we’ve got building your own fantasy seeds, which you can use to build various motifs you see in seeds. We’ve got interactive reprogramming of floral structures...
Meera - So lots going on?
Jim - Yeah, yes. It’s all fun.
From: http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/interviews/interview/1296/