After my adventures last year as an ATSE Young Science Ambassador (which I am yet to blog about, but it happened, I promise!) I've taken up most opportunities I can find to bug people about climate change adaptation and floating houses. Sometimes these are people who know what I'm talking about, like the wonderful people at ACCARNSI at their research forums, other times they are just people who stand still long enough. The best opportunities though are the ones where you get to talk to kids, ideally those in year 6 and 7. Why? Because they are awesome. Because no matter what the topic they will inundate you with questions. Because if you're starting to get tired of your topic they can help you get excited about it again. Plus, on more than one occasion I have been asked questions that I have never thought of before. Often those questions are actually key to your research, and can help you along a lot. Never underestimate the power of enquiring young minds.
So the opportunity came up to be a Young Tassie Scientist, which I now officially am. The following few posts are about the adventures and insights that happened along the way.
I encourage everyone to talk about your research with everyone and answer every question. It helps with keeping your stuff grounded to reality and relevant and also ensures that you really really know your shit. If you can answer the 5 year olds, the climate change denier aunt and the right wing cousin who thinks science is pointless with calm sensible answers then you're onto something.
And enough rambling! Onto the joys of road tripping! We had a weather man, geographer, chemistry teacher and agricultural geek in our group, along with our ever present and long suffering guide/wrangler/timekeeper.
Day 1
For an introvert a car trip is not desirable. It's squishy, noisy and exhausting. On the plus side its a learning opportunity. On this car trip I learnt one of my hidden talents is generating quotes from movies, the purpose of which is to guess which movie. My favourites were:
'follow the white rabbit'
'we've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, its dark and we're wearing sunglasses'
'what about parfait? Everybody loves parfait'
and 'I'd rather hear my dog bark at a crow than hear a man swear he loves me'
I'm hoping you know all of those.. if you don't, Google is your friend.
Anyways, it was all fine until about 60km from Queenstown when windy roads of death combined with the dark and snow activated my carsickness to quite an unpleasant degree, but we all survived (though the girl in the front's dinner didn't make it.. The smell of chunder did not assist in.. Well anything)
So far not so much science, amazingly scientists are pretty normal people when it comes to being stuck in a car for 4 hours. Boredom reigns and discussions of books, tv, games, I Spy and "What Johnny likes" can only last so long.
We were met in Queenstown with a real wood fire though, that was undoubtedly a highlight of the day. Off to entertain with science tomorrow.
And that's about it for the day (bet you wanted to know all about it!)
So the opportunity came up to be a Young Tassie Scientist, which I now officially am. The following few posts are about the adventures and insights that happened along the way.
I encourage everyone to talk about your research with everyone and answer every question. It helps with keeping your stuff grounded to reality and relevant and also ensures that you really really know your shit. If you can answer the 5 year olds, the climate change denier aunt and the right wing cousin who thinks science is pointless with calm sensible answers then you're onto something.
And enough rambling! Onto the joys of road tripping! We had a weather man, geographer, chemistry teacher and agricultural geek in our group, along with our ever present and long suffering guide/wrangler/timekeeper.
Day 1
For an introvert a car trip is not desirable. It's squishy, noisy and exhausting. On the plus side its a learning opportunity. On this car trip I learnt one of my hidden talents is generating quotes from movies, the purpose of which is to guess which movie. My favourites were:
'follow the white rabbit'
'we've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, its dark and we're wearing sunglasses'
'what about parfait? Everybody loves parfait'
and 'I'd rather hear my dog bark at a crow than hear a man swear he loves me'
I'm hoping you know all of those.. if you don't, Google is your friend.
Anyways, it was all fine until about 60km from Queenstown when windy roads of death combined with the dark and snow activated my carsickness to quite an unpleasant degree, but we all survived (though the girl in the front's dinner didn't make it.. The smell of chunder did not assist in.. Well anything)
So far not so much science, amazingly scientists are pretty normal people when it comes to being stuck in a car for 4 hours. Boredom reigns and discussions of books, tv, games, I Spy and "What Johnny likes" can only last so long.
We were met in Queenstown with a real wood fire though, that was undoubtedly a highlight of the day. Off to entertain with science tomorrow.
And that's about it for the day (bet you wanted to know all about it!)