Ross was voted the winner of the Tungsten Zone in November 2015. Here he writes about using his £500 prize money on running an interactive exhibit about the cardiovascular system.
If you’d like the chance to win funding for your own public engagement work, apply for the next I’m a Scientist, Get me out of here: imascientist.org.uk/scientist-apply
I ran an interactive exhibit showcasing how the cardiovascular system can rapidly and unconsciously change in response to the world going on around us. This showed the subtle and unique relationship the brain has with the rest of the body, demonstrating that our hearts and blood vessels quickly adapt not only in the face of exercise and physical stress, but to our emotions and thought processes too. Volunteers were attached to a monitoring device and were given a series of challenges, whilst they watched their cardiovascular systems change in real time before their own eyes.
The exhibit was very successful, received excellent feedback (people loved taking a peek inside themselves!), and I plan to roll it out further in future. The participants were particularly amazed at how quickly their bodies could change in the face of seemingly small challenges, and appreciated just how important the link between mind and body was in keeping us going 24/7!
£250 was spent on a projector, and £100 on travel. We have reached around 100 people so far. With the equipment purchased with the prize fund, I would like to take the exhibit to new locations, both locally and nationally (with a view to taking to a national science festival). Thus, the remaining funds I plan to use for travel.
