A team of science lecturers and students from Forth Valley College took on the challenge once again, of running workshops at the recent Stirling Science Festival from Wednesday 11-Saturday 14 October.
Various venues across the city hosted free events organised by the Scottish Government, Event Scotland, Stirling Alive with Scotland and Stirling Council, with the FVC team based at the Albert Halls and focussed on how we see science.
A group consisting of Lindsay Brown, Moira Wilson, Paul Sweeney (lecturers), Roz Anderson, Claire Herbst and Cameron Allison (STEM Outreach officers) and Ben Coyle and Rawan Abdullah (Biology students) – supported by organiser Curriculum Manager Fiona Jackson and John Doran (lecturer) who sorted out the many eyeballs the group for dissection – stepped up to the plate to make the workshops a great success.
Lecturer Lindsay Brown, said: “Over the day, we hosted two workshops. The first one looked at the ‘Scottish Invention of Wind Turbines’, where participants were tasked to design and test the most energy producing turbine by altering the size, shape and number of blades, over three workshops.
“The team also ran three ‘Sheep Eye Dissection’ workshops, where the participants were invited to dissect a sheep eye to learn about and identify the different features that makes up an eye ball. This was not for the squeamish. Participants also had a chance to try on eye disease simulation glasses, and experience what it would be like to suffer from things like tunnel vision and diabetic eye disease, to see how easy it would be to complete a maze.
One of the photos (all taken by Lindsay Brown), shows Caleb Drummond (8) and Jackson Harper (8) experiencing wearing the glasses.
Lindsay added: “The boys had a ball.”
