Science and Curiosity Festival
This year the SLIM team and members of staff from the School of Life Sciences took part in the Explorers Fair during ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’s Science and Curiosity festival demonstrating microscopy using a variety of different approaches The Science and Curiosity festival is an annual event in ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ in February (during the Schools’ half term break) and is a week-long series of events bringing Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths to the general public. The SLIM stand included a water drop laser microscope, a simple construction using a drop of pond water that acts as a lens when pointing a laser through it to magnify micro-organisms moving within the drop. There was also a home built microscope using a tiny computer called a raspberry pi and a more advanced laboratory fluorescence microscope.
It was a very successful day with many people visiting the stand to have a go at using the microscopes to image a variety of samples including butterfly wings, flies, pond water and numerous creepy-crawlies borrowed from the Open=Laboratory stand next to us. It was encouraging to see and talk with so many interested parents and children and to introduce them to the fascinating world under the microscope.