Cutting Edge Scientific Research on show at the Royal Society Exhibition
Six Lower Sixth Form students visited the Royal Society Summer Exhibition on Thursday 7 July. After an early start, Ollie Blunt, Joe Meredith, Ryan McDonald, Jack Smith, Rayyan Styles, James Wilson and Mr Deeks made their way to the Society’s impressive site, passing London’s Reform and Athenaeum Clubs on the way.
The Exhibition, open again for public visiting for the first time in 3 years, showcases cutting edge Scientific research and offers Young Researchers the opportunity to present their work alongside this.
The RGS students took opportunities to quiz teams of researchers from Universities across the country about their routes into their current roles and to engage with their research. The students could now explain the prospects for technologies for accelerating bone growth using remotely controlled medications, the potential importance of the Winchcombe meteorite for our understanding of how water came to flow on Earth, the value (or not!) of being able to control an extra thumb with your toes (and the importance of the data the experiment produces for neuroscientists’ understanding about the ways our brains work and adapt) and more.
They were impressed by School groups who have researched the health of honey bees and by the close connection our own Environmental Society’s interests in Air Quality monitoring and in the Marine environment bears to other work we saw. The Society’s ongoing exhibition about historic, marine research voyages ( the Endeavour, the Beagle and more) and a quick perusal of more recent issues of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society also inspired some thoughtful discussions about the ways that historians and scientists seek to explain the phenomena they study.
As is fitting for a visit to an institution that exists to promote Experimental Research, more questions were raised than answers, not least the important one for prospective University applicants, of ‘how do I now showcase this inspiration and research in my Personal Statement?’
Mr Julian Deeks, Physics Teacher and Head of Lower School Science.