Nottingham Science Blog

Following on from Part 1, here is the Part 2 of the post of the awesome May Fest event at the University of Nottingham

Fashion Award of the day goes to the BioSoc

A radio dude demonstrates the Audacity audio software to No3 Son

NSB manged to generate a peak of 735Watts on the Wattbike
#stillgotthemagic

Of course, the Physics Buskers were on hand to amaze and educate.

The Hstory Dept had some fascinating pictures and documents on show,
including this Dig For Victory pic

22 Researchers used tihs (partly constructed) model to
explain the differnet components of a cell

The Sensory Science Centre were explaining how taste works

The Human Rights Law Centre was asking children
what they thought they had the right to

A member of the English Dept explaining to No3 Son
how he could write his name in Viking Runes

The English Dept also had some though provoking stuff
on the psychology of adverts

27 The Psychology Dept had a cool bunch of games that
demonstrated how malleable the mind is.

An Arduino making music from the motors
of a bunch of disc drives (inc a nice old skool 5.25 inch floppy drive)

When a headset detects beta waves in the brain it
makes this ball rise up. Its mind control!!!

The Centre for Plant Integrative Biologies is developing a virtual root!...

...and they have an Octocopter than can lift a 2kg paylod
for analysing the biology of an entire field

No3 son looking down a microscope at some Botox Cells

The Geography Dept had this great 3D model of the Lake District
onto which they could project a variety of images
(eg what it looked in the Ice Age)

Also from the Georgraphy Dept, you could see Nottingham from the Air in 3D
with these special viewers and photos

May Fest is the University of Nottingham's annual open day for the local community. It is an awesome event, with plenty to interest adults and children alike. Much like the Science Museum in London, there is simply so much stuff going on that you cannot see it all in the one day!

This year, NSB visited the event with No1 and No3 Sons. The latter described the event afterwards with the single word "Epic!", which, unless NSB is very much mistaken (as was the case some years ago with "sick") that means he enjoyed the day very much!

Having posted about May Fest previously in 2011 and 2012, this year NSB is going to take a slighly differne "photo montage" approach. All of the images can be clicked on to enlarge. Enjoy!

May Fest is crewed by volunteer students who do a fine job of helping visitors find their way around, as well as providing maps and other information. Incidentally, UoN students also do some fine voluntary work in the local community. Well done students !

No3 asks one of the helpful volunteers
what is going on in the chemistry and physics buildings

The Tissue Engineering Group, are working on biological scaffolds to allow regeneration of damaged organs and bones. One of the reserchers explained how they were trying to print structures such as a childs jaw bone, which could then be used an an implant for a child whose jaw had been damaged by disease or in the course of complex surgery. The researchers explained that, amongst other technologies, they were developing gel type materials containging living cells. They hoped to be able to print these and then use them as implants. The team, led by Professor Kevin Shakesheff, won an award in 2008 for this technology. Regentec, a spin-off company working at Bio-City, are further developing these technologies. Also, see this BBC Report, and this review paper.

3D printing a miniature skull

A 3D printer, which is used to print items such as bone sections
which are used as biological scaffolds for tissue to regenerate into.

Whilst the biologicaa scaffolds represent a "top-down" approach to tissue engineering, the department are also doing work on a "bottom-up" approach by investigating how individual cells can be manipulated. Below you can see No3 son using a simulation of a technology that allows a laser to select and move individual cells. The researcher explained that the laser could orient the cells so that the team could investigate the effects of arraging cells in different ways, and he described how cells are not uniform but can have a "head" and a "tail". The laser can be used not only to move cells in the X and Y directions, but also in Z direction to place one cell above another. They can even focus the laser on structures within the cell and manipulate those! The technology involved is explained here and a paper by the team can be found here.

A demonstration of how researchers are using lasers to manipulate individual cells,
which is giving them an understanding of how cells interact with each other

The Chemistry Department was certainly a busy place, with a number of displays to interest visitors. No3 Son was particularly attacted by the rotary evaporator, whose purpose a researcher kindly explained.

A Chemistry researcher explains how a rotary evaporator removes
solvent from new research compounds. (BTW, that's a model of the Capsicum molecule on the table)

And No3 Son was rendered awestruck by the demonstration that allowed him to take home a piece of polyer sheet with a thin, but very pure, gold film on it. The demonstration was given by the SCFED team who are investigating the use of "supercritical fluids" as a means of prducing very thin electrodeposited metallic structures. This is possible because supercriticla fluids have no surface tension, so can penetrate very narrow openings in solid materials. According to the project website, this is no less than "a technique that could transform the future of technology".

Crikey! .

This electrolytic cell was depositing a sub micron film of pure gold
onto a thin piece of plastic sheet for No3 Son

Supercritical Fluids offer the chance to
make even smaller semiconductor structures

Meanwhile, a display by the Veterinary Science Department included information on the Online Veterinary Anatomy Museum (the clue to its nature is in the name, so don't come crying to me if you get traumatised). There was also a skeleton of a cat (See below) and a teaching resource that helped students correctly identify the anatomy of a chicken. This led to a discussion with the researcher on the differences between bird and mammal respiratory systems. Birds, it turns out, have a much more efficient system than mammals (see here. This is because birds have air bladders which store air and alos have a lung through which air only passes in one direction, allowing the extraction of oxygen to be performed mroe efficiently.

Children often assume that this skeleton is a dinosaur,
whereas it is actually a cat. Note the ridges on the upper spine,
which are used to anchor muscles

The "Fizix Trix" demonstration by the Phyiscs Dept contained all kinds of awesome, but the presenters were also able to convey their passion and enthusiasm for the subject throughout the show, with the most memorable words perhaps being "Find out more about the world around you - it makes it a more beautiful place".