This is the second year that the International Science Festival has been
held in Dunedin. If offers a wide ranging programme for all ages which in
itself is a remarkable achievement for the organisers. It attracted over
15,000 visitors in the first week.
A survey of the sites shows that the Festival is the result of keen
involvement by many sectors of the community. In addition to the
extensive programmes at the Festival Headquarters sessions are held at the
University of Otago, the Otago Museum, the Rialto Cinema, the Dunedin Town
Hall, the Public Art Gallery, the Automobile Association, the College of
Education, Speight's Brewery, the Otago Daily Times, the ODT Quantum
Theatre, the Community Art Gallery, and Nichols Greenworld.
Many of the activities and displays are free. A few examples from the
programme for Saturday 8 July show the breadth of the material that is
covered.
Free events
BP Technology Challenge - students are challenged to solve science problems
with everyday items.
Dick Smith Electronics Activity Centre
DIG and Funky Fins - hands-on puppet cabaret from Australia's leading
puppet master.
DIG - A live wire Rock Show
Funky Fins - Underwater Puppet Science
Eight Days of Dinosaurs - 'Walking with Dinosaurs' series
Hector's Dolphin - slide presentation
Keep Dunedin Beautiful Clean Up - Dr John Wilson
Not Quite all at Sea - a wildlife tour
Novelty Orienteering
Physics and Fine Art and Restoration - Documentaries
Ruud Kleinpaste: How to kill your plants more slowly
Science Show Spectacular - Discovery World
Science Theatre by the Festival SciCrew - "Air: A Show about Nothing?",
"Water Water Everywhere", "Double Bubble Trouble".
Starry, Starry Night - Star gazing
Events with a fee
Bellamy at Quantum Theatre - a hands-on experience for kids and
conservationists of all ages . Supported by the British Council
Adult $5, Child $2
A seminar for educators - Dr Zook's Microcosmic World
From Boston Dr Zook explores 'inner space' - the world of microbes for
educators. 9am-5pm $40
Micro-Discovery Tour - Join Dr Zook on a walking tour of Dunedin's
well hidden microbes. Gold coin donation.
Museums: Past, present and Future Otago Settlers Museum - Adult $4
Child free.
Award presented to Otago's Peninsula's Penguin Place
Dr David Bellamy, the renowned international environmentalist, presented
Penguin Place with the British Airways Tourism for Tomorrow New Zealand
Award which it won last year. He said that Penguin Place not only gave
people the chance to see penguins but showed how development could threaten
their survival.
The penguin reserve for the yellow-eyed penguins started as a hobby for
Scott Clarke and Howard McGrouther fourteen years ago, but had developed
into a self-supporting business. Scott Clarke said that the business paid
wages for twenty people at the height of the season and also funded
scientific research, a penguin hospital, improvements to the habitat and
trapping of predators all the year. Since the conservation work began the
number of yellow eyed penguins on the site had increased from thirty to
more than two hundred.
Bellamy and the Big Red Bus
Dr David Bellamy took a tour party of thirty children and thirty adults to
Penguin Place on the Otago Peninsula. People were very keen to travel with
the famous scientist and this was booked out very rapidly.
Ruud Kleinpaste
A session conducted by this well-known entomologist attracted more than
three hundred children who laughed hysterically as he let George the weta
and other insects crawl across his face and even into his mouth. His aim
in shows like this is to encourage children not to fear insects.
Other activities on the theme of insects run by Otago members of the
Entomological Society have drawn good crowds. Visitors have viewed many
types of spiders, beetles and slaters under bright lights and microscopes.
The Creepy Creature ID Parade was very popular.
Science theatre
Jeannie-Marie Leroi and Andrew Greenhill of the Australian organisation
Double Helix Drama have been working for years as volunteers promoting
science theatre among school children. Mr Greenhill said that science
theatre was a new concept and not fully adopted by actors who are used to
working in drama which portrays feelings and emotions, rather than black
and white facts.
The science theatre presented at the Festival is based on scripts developed
in Australia and acted by five students from Tasmania, one from Sydney and
eight from Dunedin's Logan Park High School. The themes of the drama are
the ozone layer and skin cancer in Strife in the Stratosphere and
genetic engineering in The Trial of Onco Mouse.
Symposium on global climate change
Dr Gary Blackman describes the evening symposium he attended on global
climate change with particular discussion of the consequences for Otago. It
was sponsored by the Royal Society of New Zealand and the University of
Otago as a contribution to the festival.
"Global warming was not in contention amongst the five speakers, Gary
commented. "The most convincing evidence comes from graphs of average
world temperatures obtained by several independent methods which show that
the climate over the last 1000 years was relatively constant until the
twentieth century when the mean temperature began to rise. The mean rise in
global average surface temperature seems very small (0.6degC), but it is a
fast change on the scale of the last thousand years and very significant.
It is thought that 1998 may have been the warmest year of the last
millennium.
"There are maverick scientists who dispute that global warming is taking
place or say that we need not worry about accumulation of greenhouse gases.
However the five speakers representing different disciplines took it
seriously and presented evidence that looked pretty irrefutable to me.
"Another phenomenon which is affected in part by global warming but also by
rising or sinking of land masses is the mean sea level. At the Port of
Dunedin it has risen 1.4 mm a year from 1900 more or less in parallel with
global changes. Obviously this is important for low-lying coastal regions
in New Zealand and is already having effects on many ocean islands.
"One speaker, Dr Matt McGlone of Landcare Research at Lincoln
(mcglonem@landcare.cri.nz), divided the world into the managed estate and
the natural estate. He believes the general consequences of greenhouse
climate change are:
- increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations and as a consequence
increased plant productivity if it is not limited by availability
of other nutrients
- ncreasing temperature with variable consequences depending on the
crop or plant community. In NZ we might expect, for example, southward
invasion by weeds presently limited by temperature.
- changing precipitation - rain, snow, etc varying according to area,
crop, plant community etc.
- increasing climate variability and consequently increased stress on
biological systems which may threaten their viability.
"Landcare are already drawing detailed predictive maps incorporating the
effects of these expected changes."
Science promotion at its best
The imaginative programme, the range and quality of the activities, and the
community involvement have combined to make this Festival an achievement of
which Dunedin can be justly proud.
