Vicky won the Selenium Zone in March 2012, here’s how she made use of the £500:
Taking part in I’m a Scientist was amazing fun, I had such a great time and I would like to thank everyone who voted for me.
I used the money to help fund one of my science communication activities; the Egg and Sperm Race, which I launched in 2011.
The Egg and Sperm Race is an activity that demonstrates how difficult it is for a sperm to reach an egg and how infections such as Chlamydia can impair your fertility. We do this by racing sperm through a giant 2-meter female reproduction tract, which has lots of obstacles along the way. The winner is the first sperm to reach the egg.
Children racing sperm!
We take this activity to music festivals around the UK and in 2012 we took it to Green Man Music Festival in Wales. My £500 prize money went towards helping take more volunteers than we did last year, as it was HARD work. It paid for an extra ticket to the festival and for some food and water for our hard working volunteers along with some consumables for the activity.
The festival in 2012 was great, we had over 1000 visitors to the activity and although our activity was targeted to adults we got lots of children visiting too. Parents were big fans and we even gave out a few first sex education lessons, on request of course. The sperm racing generated a lot of competition with people competing for “I came first at the egg and sperm race” prize badges.
