John won the Bromine Zone in June 2012, find out how he spent his winnings:
With the £500 I decided to use this to participate in the first “I’m a Scientist Live” event at the Cardiff Science Festival on Sunday 15th July 2012. The money was spent on flights, other travel, accommodation etc to go from St. Andrews to the Wales Millennium Centre. This was my first science festival and I was very nervous but excited to go on stage and go into combat with other scientists!
There were 5 other scientists participating, where after going through several rounds of questions 4 of us would be voted off. We came down from a “green room” to find an audience of about 200 (perhaps I’m exaggerating, but it felt like that!). We each had two minutes to introduce our work and ourselves. We had been asked to bring two facts about their work but one had to be a lie which the audience had to guess which one was which. This round was called Science Fact or Science Fiction (the round was renamed to this after my suggestion :)).
John on stage communicating science!
My science truth was that in countries around the world, but not in Europe or the UK, use Genetically modified crops etc to produce food and other stuff like T-shirts. My science fiction was that scientists in the US had created a “Lazarus” virus, capable of reanimating the dead. About 60% of the audience thought that the Lazarus virus was true!! In the next round, we were asked science questions from the audience. However, after this round, unfortunately myself and 3 other scientists were voted off, leaving two left to battle it out.
This was an immensely enjoyable experience, increasing my confidence and ability to communicate with the public in a pressurized situation. Being able to answer questions without using jargon is an essential attribute to have. The public was interested and enthusiastic, asking very good questions, and I think we were all able to answer them etc. Hopefully we demystified what scientists do, and what the scientists’ lifestyle is like (we are not all caged up in labs all the time) and hopefully inspired the children (and adults) who were there to question everything and perhaps choose to become scientists in future!
Find out more about I’m a Scientist Live in Cardiff here.
