Plant Success participated in three exciting activities for National Science Week 2024! Our Centre members ran activities for the Festival of Bright Ideas, Richmond Primary School’s Science Expo, Beaker Street Festival, Young Tassie Scientists, and Holy Family School STEM Week.
Festival of Bright Ideas (pictured above)
PhD candidates Kritika Sharma, Katya Bandow, Shamsunnahar Mukta, Hahn Vo, Lily Bennet, Chantelle Beagley, and Jiacan Sun ran a ‘Plant Detectives’ stall at the 2024 Festival of Bright Ideas event on Friday 16 (Schools Day) and Saturday 17 August (General Public).
The stall invited attendees to learn about what adaptions or traits have evolved to help some plants survive extreme environments. Conditions such as heat, drought, cold and flood are factors impacting plants more frequently due to climate change.
A popular activity for the science-curious was to look at traits inside plants using paper Foldscope microscopes, developed in the USA. One such close-up view highlighted the structure of aerial mangrove roots that have evolved to have large air channels in their tissue known as ‘aerenchyma’, which allows the plant to transport oxygen in waterlogged conditions – a desirable trait for flooding or rising sea levels.
There were also plenty of real-life plants to touch and discover other traits such as waxy leaves, succulence and salt-exuding pores. Our keenest budding plant detectives could then have a go at solving the ‘climate puzzle’ by matching plants with certain traits into an environment with their best chance of survival!
Approximately 5000 visitors attended the two-day festival.
Richmond Primary School’s Science Expo
PhD candidates Kritika Sharma and Katya Bandow along with Associate Investigator Dr Rebecca Jones represented UTAS and the Centre of Excellence for Plant Success at Richmond Primary School’s Science Expo with their stall ‘Flora explorer: the secret life of plants’ on Tuesday 13 August 2024.
Holy Family STEM Week
PhD student Hannah Drieberg visited Holy Family Primary School to share her passion for plants by conducting some experiments with two groups of students on Friday 16 August.
Beaker Street Festival
PhD candidates Kritika Sharma, Lily Bennett and Katya Bandow volunteered as a roving scientists at the Beaker Street Festival talking about Cavicams and their role in monitoring water stress in plants. Kritika said the event “was an exciting opportunity to engage with the public about the cutting-edge technology we’re working on.”
Young Tassie Scientists
PhD candidate Kritika Sharma visited 8 schools and colleges across Northwest Tasmania over 4 days. She spoke with students ranging from kinder to college level, sharing her journey into plant physiology. The main activity Kritika conducted had groups of kids give a plant superpowers to help it thrive in a specific environment, and by the end, the plant became “happy and healthy” due to their impressive understanding of adaptations. Kritika also demonstrated plant adaptations using paper microscopes, which added an extra layer of hands-on learning and excitement for the students.
Kritika said that the experience “was especially rewarding because it challenged me to get creative in explaining scientific concepts in a simple, fun, and relatable way. Their excitement reminded me of the curiosity and wonder that got me into science in the first place.”
