GCSE Science Live! Trip – Media Trip Report

Category: Biology, Media Team, News, Physics, Science, Students write

On the Wednesday 9th of February, some year 11 students attended the annual GCSE Science Live at the Manchester Opera House to watch several science-related talks.

The morning started off with a talk on Hubble vs the James Webb telescopes by Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock, who is the BBC presenter of The Sky At Night. Her passion for astronomy was enunciated by her enthusiasm as she included entertaining facts about Hubble (like how he put on a fake British accent even though he was American) and explained the positives and negatives of both telescopes.

The second speaker was Professor Jim-Al Khalili, a theoretical physicist at University of Surrey and the presenter of numerous documentaries and the author of books such as The World According to Physics. His speech was on time travel and went on to explain the existence of black holes, wormholes and how they have the potential to allow time travel to occur.

Professor Lord Robert Winston, the multitalented professor of fertility studies, politician, television presenter and author gave a talk on IVF and fertility. He emphasised how in the future he wanted IVF treatment to stop being treated like an expensive business, only affordable by the elite and the wealthy in society, but as an open resource to all; regardless of social or economic status.

Professor Alice Roberts, a lecturer at Bristol University explained how technology has advanced rapidly and allowed the fields or anthropology and archaeogenetics to be enhanced. Nowadays, archaeologists can observe entire genomes of humans from burial sites – a massive advancement in recent times.

The final talk was on how ice cubes float on water by Professor Andrea Sella who he cleverly linked how most people believe that all ices of their molecules float on its liquid counterpart when, in reality, water is the only case that does this. He then went on to say that this generalisation is not true and related it back to how harmful stereotypes and generalisations often bind certain ethnic groups together when it is only the rare exception (like water) that is true.

Overall, the trip was extremely inspiring and led to many year 11 students wanting to pursue science in their future.

Written by Jahnavi P & Lakshayaa K, Y11