Merc Curiosity Cube and Science Activities at Ocean Sciences Campus
The Chemistry Department hosted the Merc Curiosity Cube at the NMU Science Centre on 21 and 22 October. Over the course of the two days, nine groups of junior school students attended two science activities.
The first activity took place in the Merck Curiosity Cube, a purpose-built container placed adjacent to the Science Centre. The Cube’s theme was focussed on showing students how artificial intelligence (AI) systems function. Using apparatus supplied in the Cube, NMU volunteers guided the students in discovering how AI thinks and learns, how AI recognises patterns & machine learning (for example how a driverless car works), and how AI uses existing data to generate new data (for example how AI can generate pictures). After completing the Curiosity Cube activities, each student was given a pair of safety goggles and they proceeded to the Science Centre for their second activity which was an interactive science show by Dr Rubidge. Students enthusiastically volunteered to do the safe experiments wearing their newly acquired safety goggles. The show demonstrations included: simulation of combustion of fuel as occurs in an internal combustion engine, visual testing for iron(III) and polyphenols in solution, the blue bottle reaction where a clear solution changes to blue upon shaking, chilling and shrinking of an air-filled balloon with liquid nitrogen, combustion of a ladies make-up wipe that was converted into nitrocellulose, atomic emission of boron and strontium by electric excitation, the blue chemiluminescence emitted from the reaction of luminol and Jik, and lastly, a student fuelled and launched a combustion powered bottle rocket. To conclude, students were treated to a 30 minute show in the planetarium.
Over the two days 247 people visited the Curiosity Cube and the Science Centre. Students and teachers expressed that the events were both educational and entertaining, and they hoped to attend future events.