Maybe your kids already love science. If so, great! If not, these creative strategies can help. Ready to spark a love of science in the students near you? Here are five ways to get started. Encourage students to pick one action from the list below and try it out.
1. Upgrade the science fair project. Before you create that foaming tabletop volcano, check out these curiosity-powered experiments from Make, the Exploratorium, and mad scientist Grant Thompson. Which one will you try next? Science fair optional.
2. Join the citizen science brigade. ”Citizen scientists” are volunteers who help to collect and analyze research data in fields ranging from archaeology to zoology. Explore citizen science project options here, here, and here.
3. Invent a solution to a real-world problem. In Kenya, student Richard Turere invented a solar-powered way to prevent lion attacks. In Malawi, a young William Kamkwamba harnessed the wind to power his family’s home. In Hong Kong, students in Cesar Harada‘s class work together to address environmental threats to the ocean. Now it’s your turn. What problem do you care about enough to solve — and how will you do it? To filter options quickly, try the Google Science Fair’s Make Better Generator.
4. Research quirky, open-ended questions. Science is the story of humans asking ”why?” “how?” and “what if?” about what they observe. What questions will you ask of the world? To get inspired, check out these questions no one knows the answer to (yet).
5. Explore science fiction. Futurists believe that science fiction can predict the future — or at least provide us with a way to imagine and prototype the future. Do you agree? Before you decide, read one of the short sci-fi excerpts shared here, or watch a video from the Superhero Science series.
Still from “Noor - A Brain Opera” with emotions of frustration (red) and interest (yellow)
I knew it would come to this. After premiering “Noor - A Brain Opera” (Is there a place in human consciousness where surveillance cannot go?) last year, it was just announced this week former DARPA director and research scientist Regina Dugan (who had also been at Google) has joined FB to develop a non-invasive brain computer interface to decode neural activity related to speech - using, among other things research on the semantic brain.
The semantic brain, picture from Nature
The researchers plan to use optical imaging with quasi ballastic photons to create a narrow beam with a new way of detecting blood oxygen levels.
Quasi-ballistic photons - hmm, look familiar? Like in the red emotions of frustration pictured above? Picture from Facebook
Then also this week Elon Musk announced that in 2021 there will be the first human with an internet link in their head - wrong. How about Neil Harbisson and the world’s first skull transmitted painting? Musk thinks Neuralink, his new company will do it first - sorry, the art world already beat him to the punch.
Musk wants to use TCMS, or transcrainial magnetic communication which I referred to in my 2013 Planet 3D post as ‘vulcan mind meld’. Sure he has fancy Neural Dust, merged with high end mesh electronics but that is because he went out and hired another DARPA alum, Paul Merolla, who happened to work as the the lead chip designer at IBM on their DARPA-funded SyNAPSE program. Its like old McDonald’s farm in the brain realm - and a DARPA here, and a DARPA there, here a DARPA, there a DARPA, everywhere a DARPA/IARPA - E I E I O.
MIT Tech Review
They will lay these chips down using biodegradable silk, which at least gives silk worms an new factory to output to. This would require neurosurgery, which is invasive. And its open to being hacked, surveilled, and having implanted malware secretly inserted (its a chip after all).
“Print materials for Eyes – Sunhwa Arts High School 12th Drawing Exhibition.”
CHUIGRAF is a graphic design consultancy established in 2010 and based in Seoul, Korea. They are focused on typography, print design, editorial design and graphic design.
