Last Friday, the Science Gallery and Trinity hosted PROBE – Research Uncovered, the festival of research in Front Square. PROBE is part of European Researchers’ Night, and similar events take place all over Europe on the night of the 28th. PROBE is free, open to all ages, and usually includes live experiments, demonstrations, interactive workshops, and speakers. In order to get an alternative perspective on the festival, I invited my three cousins Isobel (9), Ben (12), and Ethan (13) and asked them to review the event.
“PROBE is free, open to all ages, and usually includes live experiments, demonstrations, interactive workshops, and speakers.”
Isobel kicked things off by checking out the Spreading like Wildfire stall, set up next to the campanile. There, members of the Zoology and Botany departments explained that there is an increased risk of wildfires around the world as a result of climate change. The science of how plants can regrow even after being burnt was demonstrated, and the researchers showed that fire is actually essential in the life cycles of many plants, inducing them to drop their seeds. Past forestry management practices have worked to prevent all forest fires, assuming that they only damage the ecosystem, but this has turned out to be far from true. However, plant species will now be forced to adapt to an increased frequency, timing and spread of wildfire. Isobel enjoyed this stall because she got to do a drawing with charcoal, found a beetle, saw a pine cone from a giant sequoia, and got to make fun of botanist Cian White’s field trip hat, or “jungle hat”.
“The science of how plants can regrow even after being burnt was demonstrated, and the researchers showed that fire is actually essential in the life cycles of many plants, inducing them to drop their seeds.”
Isobel said that “my favourite thing was probably trying to make the Book of Kells” with the book and print research team, who were excited to participate in the festival for the first time. “We count as research too!” one of the demonstrators enthusiastically exclaimed as he helped Isobel colour a picture from the ancient manuscript. There was also a ticketed event held by members of the team from Trinity where attendees could learn about their research on the medieval manuscripts contained within The Old Library’s collection.
Ben and Ethan were preoccupied in the Makerspace tent, where they were learning how to extract DNA from strawberries at the DNAwesome stand. While Ethan primarily enjoyed attacking us with the stringy extracted DNA, this was Ben’s favourite stall. “I learned that if you stretch out all our DNA you could get to the sun and back 600 times. I liked it because there were lots of stuff to do but you got to do things as well, they didn’t just show you. Everyone was really nice.” Ben explained. There were lots of school aged children present in the Makerspace, and the hands-on learning approach seemed to be really successful in engaging them.
“I learned that if you stretch out all our DNA you could get to the sun and back 600 times.”
Also featured was Bright Club at the Main Stage, where researchers from science, humanities, and social science were doing stand-up comedy for the first time. These researchers were given a crash course in comedy that day, and were talking about their work while cracking a few jokes. Ben commented that the Makerspace tent was better because “there was stuff on worms, and the brain, and you got to look at microscope things under the microscope,” which nobody could argue with. A very long discussion occurred afterwards about Jurassic Park and how they cloned dinosaurs by filling in blanks in ancient DNA with frog DNA.
AMBER is the Advanced Materials and BioEngineering Research centre that provides a partnership between leading researchers in materials science and industry, but the kids thought Amber was the name of the woman in charge of it all.
The mini LED lights which the AMBER research team were teaching people how to make were also a huge success. AMBER is the Advanced Materials and BioEngineering Research centre that provides a partnership between leading researchers in materials science and industry, but the kids thought Amber was the name of the woman in charge of it all. “I think my dad would be interested in making the potato lights” Isobel said as she walked across Front Square, referring to the Lightbulb Moments stall where batteries were made out of potatoes, coins and screws. At the Café Curie tent, Professor Jane Stout was on stage, telling a gathered crowd about her All-Ireland Pollinator Plan. Peter Cox and Aneta Nerguti of Trinity Talks Science, Trinity’s very own science podcast, were also at Front Square. They had just held a Walking Debate surrounding the theme of Citizen Science.
“My least favourite part was walking up the stairs to get to your house,” Isobel tells me as we are looking out of my bedroom window in the GMB. We can still see the demonstrative fire flickering by the campanile. Front Square isn’t getting any less busy, but the kids are getting tired. They decide that it would be cool if their school could go as a field trip next year. Their mum asks them what type of scientist they would like to be if they could choose. Isobel says “a biologist, one looking at the red blood cells, or the plants!” Ben says he would choose “biology, or making computer games for the army.” Ethan, obviously still thinking of the DNAwesome stall, says he would like to be a biologist and “genetically alter myself like a mutant.”
