In the Enquiry Zone, students will chat with 5 scientists working in a variety of areas who will develop an idea for a Citizen Science project. During the two weeks of the event, students will help the scientists come up with ideas and questions that can be answered through experiments that could be done at school. These could range from students recording how fast they can run, to how noisy a classroom is, to what the weather is like each day.
Students will then vote for the project they want to happen, and with the help of the winning scientist will carry out the research in June 2017, recording and sharing the results using the nQuire-it online platform developed by the Open University (www.nquire-it.org).
Students might take ideas from the fields of expertise of the five scientists on this zone. For example, one scientist studies wildlife in our seashores and how we can help them thrive, one looks at how smartphone applications can help patients with heart problems and one works on the conservation of different types of animals. One removes parts of the brain that aren’t working well and another uses many different techniques to check medicines.