This year’s British Science Festival is a partnership between Liverpool John Moores University, University of Liverpool and the British Science Association – and the second day of the Festival was centred on the two university campuses.
There was a brilliant timetable of talks from academics working in universities all across the UK today at the Redmonds Building, including Can your cash inspire climate action? with Mark Davis, Professor of Economic Sociology at the University of Leeds, and Woman, chemist, activist with Lauren Mullin, Senior Lecturer in Analytical Chemistry at LJMU.
Attendees to Can your cash inspire climate action? found a copy of a bank note on their seats when they arrived, to inspire them to think about the value we attach to money. Mark explained that, while shopping ethically i.e. buying a bamboo toothbrush, isn’t a bad thing, it won’t save us; we can’t consume our way out of the climate crisis.
He continued to say that we need to do different things with our money besides shop, we need to invest in green solutions. To facilitate this, Mark has worked with partners to create Local Climate Bonds (LCBs), a type of crowdfunding which lets members of the public invest in their local council’s green projects.
With a minimum investment of £5, this project is socially inclusive, and involves members of communities in tangible, positive changes like solar panels on schools and urban tree planting.
At Woman, chemist, activist, Lauren talked the busy lecture theatre through the astonishing lives and achievements of four women in chemistry from the 19th and 20th centuries who fought almost insurmountable gender discrimination for the right to be respected alongside male peers.
The audience heard about Ida Smedley and Martha Annie Whiteley who presented a petition to the Chemical Society, now known as the Royal Society of Chemistry, asking for women to be allowed entry. Their petition was dated 1904 but the rule barring women wasn’t overturned until 1919, when Ida and Martha became two of the first female members.
Lauren also shared the story of Kamala Bhagvat who was similarly refused entry to the Indian Institute of Science as a woman in 1933, staged a successful sit-in and went on to have a decades-long, celebrated career in chemistry.
The third part of Lauren’s talk celebrated Kathleen Lonsdale, the first woman president of the British Science Association. Kathleen was an incredibly talented chemist, starting university at age 16, and becoming a pioneer in the field of crystallography.
In 1943 she was sentenced to a one month in Holloway Women’s Prison for refusing to register for civil defence duties or to pay a fine for refusing to register, due to her stance as a pacificist. After serving her time, she became committed to prison reform.
Visitors to the Redmonds Building today also had the chance to visit the Liverpool in space drop-in sessions where they could learn about how being in space affects the human body, and get to know different types of asteroids.
Over in the Yoko Ono Lennon Centre, as well as some more brilliant talks, Festival goers could chat to members of the team from the Department of Physics at UoL who are working on building partical detectors that will become part of CERN’s Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.
Looking ahead to tonight, we’re very excited about The great science demonstrations. Ever! with the Royal Institution (Ri) - an anniversary celebration of the Ri’s legendary Christmas lectures and a guaranteed mind-blowing experience – and exploring the innovations and advancements in sport science in Peak performance: 50 years of sport science.
Read blogs covering other days of the Festival