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AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM PRIMARY SCHOOL PROGRAM

2017 SYDNEY SCIENCE FESTIVAL AT THE AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM PRIMARY SCHOOL

WELCOME

TO THE 2017 SYDNEY SCIENCE FESTIVAL AT THE AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM Join us as we celebrate 190 years of the Australian Museum, and encourage future generations to explore and embrace the wonders of science. We are proud to be co-producing the Sydney Science Festival 2017 with the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences. Together we are showcasing a range of events that are celebrating the National Science Week theme of ‘Future Earth’, and the innovation and achievements of the Australian scientific community. The Festival promises to reveal new scientific wonders and real-world applications for you and your students to explore.

CONTENTS EXPO 2 Workshops 4 Shows 11 Talks 16 Exhibitions 18 The Team 20

2017 SYDNEY SCIENCE FESTIVAL AT THE AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM PRIMARY SCHOOL

The Science Festival brings together science educators, communicators and professionals from all across Australia to provide an immersive and interactive educational experience for students and teachers alike. The expertise and enthusiasm of the community that has grown around the Australian Museum and the Science Festival has made it a firm favourite of schools, and the science education highlight of our year! Hundreds of Australia’s brightest and best come together to offer a huge range of diverse hands-on activities, and inspiring and interactive shows. The Science Expo lets students and teachers have one-on-one conversations with science industry professionals, and see applications of science to better understand how it benefits our everyday lives.

The Science Festival could not exist without the support and participation of the many organisations and individuals who help ensure its high quality and diverse activities. I would particularly like to extend sincere thanks to our Major Partner 3M Australia and Festival Partner ANSTO; our Education Partners Macquarie University, University of New South Wales, University of Sydney, University of Technology Sydney; our Supporting Partner Inspiring Australia and of course to all our wonderful volunteers and science engagement and event staff who’ve worked so hard to develop such a diverse program. I would also like to extend our warmest thanks to you — teachers and science supporters. Your passion for supporting students as they engage with STEAM is creating a generation of thinkers who aren’t afraid to find innovative ways to improve the quality of life for their communities. Help us celebrate science education and show what a generation of informed and empowered students can bring to our community.

Kim McKay AO Executive Director & CEO Australian Museum

2017 SYDNEY SCIENCE FESTIVAL AT THE AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM PRIMARY SCHOOL

EXPO

SCIENCE EXPO MEET THE EXPERTS

Take a hands-on approach to science and meet the experts! The Expo gives students an immersive space where they can ask all the hard questions, try out some science experiments and investigate the science they encounter every day. Australia’s top science institutions and organsations come together to provide students with interactive booths where they can explore STEM and get excited about the future of science. Highlights this year focus on global sustainability science and the future of Earth. PRESENTERS: Multiple organisations including the Australian Museum, 3M, Macquarie University, University of Technology Sydney, University of New South Wales, Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, Code Club Australia, Children’s Medical Research Institute, Victor Chang Cardiac Institute, Modfab 3D Printing, Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute, Australian National Maritime Museum, Australian National Fabrication Facility, Nutty Scientists, National Parks, Engineers Without Borders, Royal Botanic Gardens and more.

2017 SYDNEY SCIENCE FESTIVAL AT THE AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM PRIMARY SCHOOL

WORKSHOPS

SCIENCE OF THE PACIFIC Embark on a cultural tour to discover the science of the Pacific! Interact with collection items as Museum staff reveal the secrets behind these objects, and the wonderful communities who made them. Find out more about the technologies of Pacific communities, their sustainable practices, and the everyday science encountered in their cultural practices.

CODE CLUB SCRATCH WORKSHOP The world is run by cats! Join Code Club Australia and learn how to code your very own Scratch cat game! PRESENTER: Code Club Australia

PRESENTER: Australian Museum

THE MATHEMATICS OF HONEYCOMBS

MACQUARIE HANDS-ON SCIENCE

Bees create honeycomb to make honey out of nectar, to store honey, to store pollen, to lay eggs and to raise larvae into adults. Honeycomb cells are truly ‘multi-purpose spaces’. Developed through collaboration between the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute and the Gene Technology Access Centre, this integrated unit of work explores the amazing structures of honeycomb by examining the properties of regular and irregular polygons and polyhedra. In this session, students will solve problems using geometric and algebraic reasoning and construct a giant model beehive.

Hands-on experiments that will make you laugh! Explore the chemistry of common household items and discover the microscopic world. In this interactive session, you’ll make slime with glue and borax; reveal hidden messages with turmeric; make Betadine messages disappear with Vitamin C; create elephant toothpaste with bleach; witness the expanding power of a gas; see the microscopic world magnified 200x, and more! PRESENTER: Macquarie University

WILDLIFE DNA

FUN RECYCLING

The Australian Museum has collectors, researchers... and crime fighters!? Meet the superhero scientists who fight crime from the lab. Learn how to extract DNA from a strawberry with staff from the internationally acclaimed Australian Centre for Wildlife Genomics. Discover how they use similar methods of DNA extraction to help identify vulnerable and endangered animal species, and fight illegal wildlife smuggling!

Whoever said recycling can’t be fun was talking utter rubbish! In this workshop we’ll learn how to recycle, why it’s a good idea and what could happen if we don’t find ways to repurpose our waste. We’ll build cities, pretend to be the earth, play the sorting game and even learn how to turn plastic into parachutes to take home! PRESENTER: Nutty Scientists

PRESENTERS: Australian Museum Research Institute

PRESENTER: Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute

2017 SYDNEY SCIENCE FESTIVAL AT THE AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM PRIMARY SCHOOL

WORKSHOPS

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE FROG KIND

CHEMICAL OPPOSITES

This interactive workshop will give you the opportunity to explore the wonderful world of frogs. From their fascinating life cycle to their place in our environment and the role you can play in helping them survive in the wild, we will be learning about frog biology and frog-related environmental science. Are you ready to get up close and personal with some of Australia’s largest and most interesting frogs?

Get back to the basics! Find out more about the foundational chemistry concept of opposites: acids and bases; oil and water. What does it mean if a substance is basic? How acidic are some everyday items? How can chemistry help fix an oil spill? Get hands-on in this interactive workshop to discover just how important these basic scientific concepts are to our everyday lives. PRESENTERS: 3M Australia

PRESENTER: Frog and Tadpole Study Group

SECRETS OF THE EARTH

MARINE BIOLOGY

Piece together some palaeontological puzzles! With the help of AMRI researcher Jackie Nguyen, find out how fossils are formed and learn about different types of fossils. Discover what fossils can tell us about the lives of dinosaurs and megafauna and their evolutionary relationships with today’s animals.

How do fish breathe? How do animals stay warm in the freezing water at the poles? Can we clean up an oil spill? This workshop takes us on a journey from the world’s tropical coral reefs all the way out to the north and south poles! We’ll learn about evolutionary adaptations, insulation, pollution in our oceans and marine ecosystems. We’ll even take home a model of one of the ocean’s ecosystems to share our knowledge with family and friends!

PRESENTER: Australian Museum Research Institute

PRESENTERS: Nutty Scientists

2017 SYDNEY SCIENCE FESTIVAL AT THE AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM PRIMARY SCHOOL

WORKSHOPS

ABORIGINAL BUSH FOOD & MEDICINE

AUSTRALIA’S FIRST SCIENTISTS

CLIMATE CHANGE AND AUSTRALIAN ANIMALS

Where could you get something to cure your headache before we had pharmacies? How do you find food without a supermarket? Learn how Indigenous Australians survived tens of thousands of years before modern conveniences were available, and see how traditional knowledge compares to Western science. Come along and learn how to let the land provide for you.

Did you know Indigenous Australians were astronomers, geologists, physicists, biologists and chemists long before Galileo, Plato, Einstein, Darwin and the Curies were even born!?! Join our Aboriginal Educators on a specialised tour of Australian Museum galleries and exhibition spaces, and discover how Indigenous Australians have used the earth’s resources and the stars to survive and prosper for thousands of years.

What does a change in temperature or rainfall mean for Aussie animals? Climate change is one of the key issues facing the world today. Get handson and investigate how changes to weather and climate are impacting Australian animals.

PRESENTER: Australian Museum

WORKSHOPS

PRESENTER: Australian Museum

2017 SYDNEY SCIENCE FESTIVAL AT THE AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM PRIMARY SCHOOL

PRESENTER: Australian Museum

CSI WORLD Put on your forensic suit and boots and unlock the mysteries of a comic convention crime! CSI World returns by popular demand with a one hour workshop of exciting crime scene investigation activities using authentic materials. From fingerprints to DNA, students will retrieve and analyse evidence found on their mock crime scene. They will then decipher who did it, from a list of possible offenders. So come ‘suit and boot’ and help solve the mystery! PRESENTER: Australian Museum

2017 SYDNEY SCIENCE FESTIVAL AT THE AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM PRIMARY SCHOOL

SHOWS

ELECTRICITY & LIGHT Sparks fly in this energetic and action-packed exploration of magnets, static electricity and light. Audience members are divided into two teams and play for points in the ‘Electricity Quiz’, under the watchful eye of a zany scorekeeper. Who will be victorious? The mighty ‘Magnetos’ or the lively ‘Electros’? PRESENTER: Creative Science

SHOWS

VOLCANOES, ERUPTIONS AND MORE… Did you know that rocks move? The world as we know it has been developed by these movements through eruptions, earthquakes, meteors and tectonic plate shifts. Be mesmerised by the blaze and versatility of Geology and witness a scientific power that rocks in this interactive show. Let’s see if we can make a volcano explode! PRESENTER: Australian Museum

2017 SYDNEY SCIENCE FESTIVAL AT THE AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM PRIMARY SCHOOL

LIVE ANIMAL INTERACTION

SCIENCE MASH-UP

Catch up with some of Australia’s favourite animals! Meet live native reptiles, mammals and birds. Take a peek at some of the cutest creatures and hear stories of how they’ve adapted to a constantly changing environment. Learn the difference between native and introduced species and why biodiversity and conservation are so important to our world.

Celebrate science with this silly science mix up featuring a medley of amazing demonstrations. Help highly competitive presenters as they use surprising science demonstrations to prove they can do the best science tricks in Australia! This entertaining, fast-paced and interactive show includes hilarious antics and lots of audience participation

PRESENTER: Australian Wildlife Displays

PRESENTER: Creative Science

2017 SYDNEY SCIENCE FESTIVAL AT THE AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM PRIMARY SCHOOL

SHOWS

FIRE, EARTH, WATER AND AIR SHOW

THE MYSTERY INVESTIGATORS SHOW

Witness the melting, freezing and evaporating powers of energy! Using a variety of cutting edge, fiery and explosive demonstrations, students will experience an exciting and engaging science stage show while learning that science impacts their every day lives. This show has a chemical and physical science focus with dynamic demonstrations which are sure to have your students screaming for more!

Can you bend a spoon or find water using only a stick? The Mystery Investigators can! Join Richard Saunders from TV’s The One and his team as they unlock the secrets behind strange and mysterious stories in this interactive show. Help the Mystery Investigators use scientific methods to demonstrate and explain fantastic phenomena and bust scientific myths!

PRESENTER: Street Science

PRESENTER: Mystery Investigators

THE STREET SCIENCE SHOW

SOUND EFFECTS

Direct from Brisbane, the Street Science Team arrive using a variety of cutting edge demonstrations to teach students of all ages about the world around them. The scientific content of this performance focuses on forces and chemical change with explicit teaching around particle theory and the 3 states of matter. By using explosive demonstrations, this show will educate and improve student engagement in the sciences.

In this highly interactive, ear tingling show, your students will discover the secrets of sound and create some very funny sound effects using DIY materials. Audiences will learn exactly what sound is, understand pitch and volume, what a sound wave is and what our ears are for apart from looking awesome in earrings. PRESENTER: Science Safari

PRESENTER: Street Science

2017 SYDNEY SCIENCE FESTIVAL AT THE AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM PRIMARY SCHOOL

SHOWS

PLANETARIUM

THE LIGHT SIDE…

THE CLIMATE CHANGE SHOW

Travel through the universe with our awe-inspiring Earth & Space science experience. Our planetarium will engage, amaze and inspire as we take you on a Space adventure. Discover the solar system, planets, stars, lunar cycles, seasons, constellations and much more. Be immersed in a stunning 360 degree movie. Take a trip through the solar system and onwards to the very edge of our galaxy and then come back down to Earth to find out what’s in the sky tonight

Light is all around us. Some of it we can see, some of it we can’t. In this show we’ll talk about light and look at how it is used in the world through some exciting demonstrations.

Green is the new black in the Climate Change Show. Should we eat food that’s grown locally? Is it better to reuse and recycle, or just toss things away? Come on a journey around planet earth, with an overly confident superhero who is trying to save the world from its evil nemesis – climate change. Your students will learn to overcome, and expertly tackle the challenges that global warming and a changing climate will throw at them. Crazy weather, flatulent cows and a look into new and exciting sustainable technologies are just a small part of the journey in this fast paced, highly interactive show.

PRESENTER: University of Technology Sydney

PRESENTER: Planetarium Education

PRESENTER: Science Safari

2017 SYDNEY SCIENCE FESTIVAL AT THE AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM PRIMARY SCHOOL

TALKS

GREAT MOMENTS IN SCIENCE Join Australia’s science legend Dr Karl for a whirlwind of scientific explanations and bizarre facts. Come and laugh and learn. PRESENTER: Dr Karl Kruszelnicki

TALKS

FANTASTIC FROGS Meet Dr Jodi Rowley, amphibian expert at the Australian Museum Research Institute (AMRI) as she talks about her exciting work in the field and reveals everything there is to know about frogs PRESENTER: Australian Museum Research Institute

DINOSAURS: ARE THEY STILL AMONG US? Join ANSTO’s Dr Joseph Bevitt for a fun demonstration of dinosaur discovery. Scientists are finding more than just rocks and bones, but even those are revealing fascinating insights into dinosaur mass, their lifestyle, “hair” style and diet. Dr Bevitt will also discuss the latest evidence he has found to show that dinosaurs are still amongst us, with ‘live’ research results, real samples of dinosaur bones and an assortment of prehistoric stones. PRESENTER: ANSTO

2017 SYDNEY SCIENCE FESTIVAL AT THE AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM PRIMARY SCHOOL

EXHIBITIONS

EXHIBITION VISITS

Become acquainted with the objects that started it all by booking into our renowned exhibitions. Wander through old favourites or discover the new exhibitions at Australia’s first Museum. Gallery visits can be scheduled for the following exhibitions: Wild Planet Earth is home but it’s not just ours. Parading for you in Wild Planet are around 400 of the amazing animal species we share our planet with. Minerals: featuring the Albert Chapman Collection Step into a glittering world of colour and light and discover a collection renowned for its mineralogical diversity, crystal perfection and aesthetic appeal, including an impressive number of specimens found here in Australia! Surviving Australia Get close to some intriguing Australian fauna, and discover a world beneath the waves. Pacific Spirit Experience the colour, culture and artistry of one of the world’s most diverse regions, and discover how each displayed object embodies the culture that continues to resonate in contemporary Pacific societies, including here in Sydney. Dinosaurs See, hear, touch and even smell a time where dinosaurs roamed the world.

2017 SYDNEY SCIENCE FESTIVAL AT THE AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM PRIMARY SCHOOL

THE TEAM

THE SCIENCE ENGAGEMENT AND EVENTS TEAM

FROM LEFT TO RIGHT:

Geoff Gardner, Catherine Beehag, Tubby the Robot, Ellie Downing and Ashleigh Harrington.

amsciencefestival.net

T (02) 9320 6389 E see@austmus.gov.au

2017 SYDNEY SCIENCE FESTIVAL AT THE AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM PRIMARY SCHOOL

Major Partner

Festival Partner

Education Partners

Supporting Partner

Festival Producers

Printed on recycled and virgin wood fibre paper 2017 SYDNEY SCIENCE FESTIVAL AT THE AUSTRALIAN MUSEUM PRIMARY SCHOOL