CORDIS | Science Week | Imagine, Show, Discuss

Exploring further

> Science centres
> Science students
> Young scientists
(to find out more about the contest)

> Find out more about previous Science Week projects

Imagine, Show, Discuss was the brochure produced by the Commission to report on what actually happened during 2001 Science Week. This document and the brochure available in early 2003, which will report on this year's events, can be requested from 'contacts'.

How can science be made more attractive to young people? What methods can be used to inspire and spark enthusiasm? Should curiosity about science and the natural world be nurtured from a very early age?

Stimulating interest among young people and bringing science to life and ‘out of the classroom’ can lead to a life-long passion for discovery, and a genuine appreciation of the rich career opportunities that science and research can offer.

“When I imagine a triangle, I do not conceive it only as a figure comprehended by three lines, but I also apprehend these three lines as present by the power and inward vision of my mind, and that is what I call imagining.” René Descartes

“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” Albert Einstein

Mapping the way
Science is a quest in which the passion and investigations of the researcher confront the complexity of nature and the certainties of society. This is certainly true of the story of John Harrisson, a carpenter turned watchmaker who, in the early XVIIIth century, devoted 30 years of his life to developing mechanisms able to determine the precise position of ships, at a time when the establishment still believe that the answers to questions of longitude were written in the stars.

And the winner is….
It was all suspense and emotion before the dream came true for Linda, Leva, Anitra and Mare. Their project for a solar house with reduced energy consumption won the girls from the Latvian school of Zemgales first prize at Energetic Friends. Their project entitled ‘Let the sun shine’ combined serious technological content with possible applications in the region’s climatic conditions.

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“One of our pleasures was to enter our workshop at night; then, all around us, we would see the luminous silhouettes of the beakers and capsules that contained our products.”
Maria Sklodowska-Curie

“I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”
Isaac Newton

Gripping stuff
A public venue to explore science: where better than a Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester. The north-west of England is home to many microsystem companies and research centres. For young people, entertainment is everything. While pupils play the computer game, representatives from Hall Effect Technologies explain how their newly-released ‘3-D mouse’ uses micromagnets and electronics to detect handgrip movement.
A video, shown to school groups before they visit the exhibition, provides an important introduction. It helps pupils to understand the context of the Microsystems they see on display.

A theatre of knowledge
In the magnificent surrounds of the Villa del Pogio Imperiale near Florence – once owned by the Medici family – Leonardo da Vinci, Charles Darwin and Charles Linneaus were brought back to life for this year’s Public Understanding of Science and Health (PUSH) meeting. The three-day forum brought together 175 participants from six European countries – scientists and students, school teachers and university professors, administrators and policy-makers in the field of education, documentary film producers and theatre actors. The programme included scientific presentations, lectures, workshops, science theatre, cultural and social activities…

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“The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.”
John Maynard Keynes

“Every man gets a narrower and narrower field of knowledge in which he must be an expert in order to compete with other people. The specialist knows more and more about less and less and finally knows everything about nothing.”
Konrad Lorenz

Imagine this
The year is 2013 and the Internet has grown so intelligent that it is performing new functions through its own choices. Should it be shut down or allowed to play out what may be a unique experiment?

Learning by playing
How does a cell become a complex organism? What are the mutations? And how do they cause various kinds of cancer?

Pause for thought
In the beginning was the Big Bang. But then what? What do we know about the Universe? From what point can life be said to have existed? And what forms could it take beyond our planet?