Hey Blog! Two Fridays ago, I went to the Big Bang Fair in Birmingham; and last Friday we went to the National Stone Centre, so that’s what this post is about!
The Big Bang Fair is a yearly gathering of scientists, teachers, innovators and other people involved with STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths). It is run in the NEC at Birmingham, and attracts visitors and stallholders from across the nation. We have looked at going to it before, but have never actually gone. This year, we decided to go with a couple of friends who we took part in the Midlands Makers Challenge with. We took the train down to Birmingham International, and then walked into the NEC and found Hall 12, where the event was stationed. After quickly getting a coffee and checking we were ready, we walked in and presented our tickets, where we got a returnable lanyard to certify we were permitted to wander around the fair.
There are a lot of stalls at the BBF. Some are about developing new technologies – I was interested especially by one showing how superconductor magnets can be used to help transport and a different stall showing how they can be used to generate green energy via nuclear fusion. Some are about how we can combat climate change. Others still show medical developments and analysis of your body – one showed you whether you were still growing by ultrasound-scanning your wrist (I am still growing 🙂 !). I went around quite a few, but unfortunately I couldn’t see them all as there was not enough time available to see everything. It was all very interesting and I learned a few new facts and ideas on how to do things.
Last Friday, I went to the National Stone Centre to visit the Mary Anning exhibition. Mary Anning was the first influential female fossil hunter, whose work, it is said, inspired some parts of Charles Darwin’s On The Origin Of Species. She found some of the first ichthyosaurs and pterosaurs, (ichthio saurus fish-lizard and ptero saurus wing-lizard), many ammonites, and other fossils from the Jurassic Coast in Devon. Living on low pay from the fossils she sold, and unable to attend any scientific institutions to learn more and put her views across because of the systemic sexism of the day, she is still remembered as an important early female palaeontologist. We’d be much more appreciative of her today! While the exhibition was rather small, it did include a few things I hadn’t known about her – e.g. she was almost struck by lightning as a baby!
The two days out were different, but both gave me a bit more information on our world, both the history of palaeontology and the future of technology. What a good rhyming sentence to end on!