Dorothy – 14/7/00
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.
