My original intention for spending the money was to provide support for schools to visit Rutherford Appleton Labs. However, it seems that usually extra support isn’t needed. The schools that are further away don’t want to take too much time travelling and the ones who are closer can usually afford to pay for themselves.  So I decided to leave half the money, £250, available for schools to apply to if they need financial support for any of the events that the lab runs. This should be enough to help one or two schools who couldn’t otherwise go.

The other £250 will be used for Bath Taps into Science (http://www.bath.ac.uk/math-sci/extracurricular/bathtaps/). This is an annual science festival run during March in Bath (see the picture on the left). It’s set up in a huge hall. Different organizations have a few tables and people (a “stand”) and show off something to do with science. For instance, there’s one stand where you build your own robots and control them, one where you get to play with lots of funky liquids. There are some biology and chemistry experiments around too. A firm favorite is the liquid nitrogen show – every half an hour someone does a show based around all the funky things you can do with liquid N₂. Schools and the general public come and visit the festival so it’s a great way to show science to everyone.

We decided that the event could really be improved by hiring “The Sun Dome” from Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (http://www.ccfe.ac.uk/Sun_Dome.aspx). This is like a portable observatory where children can go inside and see movies about how the sun works and learn about the solar system etc. So the bulk of the £250 will go towards getting this to the event for March 2011. Any money left over will be spent on supplies for some science kits. These are boxes containing smaller experiments that teachers can borrow to demonstrate to their classes all year round as well as at the festival.

Bath Taps into Science 2010

If nobody applies for the money I’ve left for Rutherford Appleton lab by the end of 2011, then this will go into Bath Taps in 2012 instead. At the moment it’s sitting in it’s own savings account gathering interest waiting to be spent!