Ms. Abbot and 8 MACC students have been at UBC for the past 2 days.  The students arrived in the Student Union Building (SUB) and set up their projects just after lunch.  We went for a short walk in the sunshine to the Library to release some of the nerves and then headed back for the first round of judging.  We started in the theatre with an orientation and introduction from the GVRSF Chair and a welcome from the Dean of Sciences.  He said that the students are already members of the scientific community and that science is messy – so to relax and enjoy the experience, the conversation and the learning.  The students went in and Ms. Abbot and the parents stayed out.  While the projects are judged only students and judges are permitted in the fair.  At 5pm, hungery faces emerged and we were able to chat for about an hour as everyone ate their dinner and told us about the types of questions the judges asked.  Still excited and awaiting the more judging, the students returned to their projects until 9-9:30pm (ish).

Early morning Friday, we returned to UBC and were ready for a day of excitement (with less pressure than yesterday).  Today was lab tour day – each student signed up to visit a lab on campus.  Students will be posting about their lab experiences next week.  Ms. Abbout was an adult chaperon for the Biodiversity Brainiacs tour of Beaty Biodiversity Museum.  The tour was amazing – not only did we get to check out the collect and hear about how the museum came to be, but we also got to go into the labs behind the scenes.  We saw the process of preservation of specimens.  Imagine beetles helping remove organic matter from dolphin bones… and then imagine a drier to preserve birds and the steps taken to maintain the integrity of the birds physiology.  We also lucked out because they were getting ready to do necropsies on snowy white owls that had died in Mud Bay and they hoped to figure out why they were dying.  One of the most interesting observations of the lab was how collaborative it was – the labs were set up in an open way so colleagues in different fields could collaborate or in the case of the snowy white owls colleagues from different agencies or organizations.  There was also an incredible things we learned about that some birds wings have patterns that glow under black light (but that will be in the next blog). 

We then went upstairs to a lab that was studying jumping spiders and two researchers shared the work they are doing for their Masters.  One was looking at correlations between body shape and environment and another was looking at the chromosomes to learn more about their evoluntionary development.  We also learned how to feed fruit flies to spiders.

We returned to the SUB and the students explained their projects to visiting school groups.  And we were able to catch up with a MACC alum who know is now enrolled in Vancouver.

After a quick lunch, we all eagerly headed to the Science Show.  So eager we were nearly in the front row, but second row was great for us.  Imagine taking a pledge “I promise… I will NOT try this at home.”  And then the fun began… launched a bottle rocket… canoned a ball (very very soft)… sent electrons through a chain of people… some firey ignitions and some hair standing on its ends.

Tomorrow the fair is open to the public 9-12noon and there are more than 25 students from SD43 participating from more than 6 different schools.  http://www.gvrsf.ca/