Thank you so much for voting me as the winner of the Electromagnetic Zone! I am very happy and surprised to have won – I never expected to make it past the eliminations! I’d like to give a special mention to the I’m A Scientist team for organising and running everything so smoothly, as well as the other scientists in the zone. They are fantastic scientists and they all deserved to win.
To all the students that asked questions in the Electromagnetic Zone: thank you! I had a lot of fun over the two weeks, interacting with you all, answering some really tough and thought-provoking questions. The questions came so rapidly, that I had to learn how to type really quickly! I was really impressed with the questions, as well as with what the important science questions students had in early 2020. There were a real variety, ranging from “Cats or dogs?”, to “how is a black hole formed?”, and lots of questions about Covid-19. Hopefully we were able to answer them all!
One question we were asked a lot in the Electromagnetic Zone is: “Who inspired you to become a scientist?”. I hope that after chatting with the six scientists, that some of you might be inspired to become a scientist too. There are so many fun, exciting and different fields in science. Whether its understanding other planets (AJ and myself), designing equipment to understand fundamental physics (Amelia), using lasers to communicate with satellites (Jesse), looking at space weather produced by the sun (Megan), trying to reduce the amount of plastic in the world by turning it into something useful (Katherine), or any of the other countless jobs that scientists across the world do, we’re all trying to understand and improve the world around us by finding out or trying new things.
Finally, if you’re reading this and you’re a scientist, I’d highly encourage you to apply for an upcoming instalment of I’m A Scientist. I’ve really learned a lot about outreach and how to communicate my research over the two weeks. It’s a really rewarding experience, an excellent opportunity to participate in STEM outreach and is really fun for the students to interact with a variety of scientists.
Dave
Up for the challenge?
Want to answer some downright weird questions? Maybe even learn things from students?
Scientists! If you’d like the chance to win funding for your own public engagement work, apply for the next I’m an Scientist, Get me out of here :iasuk.ddev.site/scientist-apply/
It only takes 2 minutes and one sentence to apply!