This is the brainchild of Sir Harry Kroto (he of the Buckyballs,
nanotubes, etc.). I have a tenuous link in that Harry plays the banjo
(!), but doesn't, unfortunately, have enough time to come to my Banjo
Festival . . . However . . . the basic concept of the trust is to widen
the accessibility of science, especially for young people (down to
primary school) and to do this partly by broadcast interviews and other
TV/radio programmes, and partly by workshops.
It's true that some of the simpler concepts of biomimetics are readily
accessible to the youngest schoolchildren. I've talked to them about
origami and folding patterns of leaves and insect wings; of Velcro and
other hook-based joining systems; of hedgehog spines and porcupine
quills. These are things which are commonly observed and readily
available. An extension might be to suggest a biomimetics teaching kit
(a set of instructions on preparation of demonstration material plus a
set of slides, as transparencies or PowerPoint) which could be made
available as a downloadable resource to Vega (or any other web site),
also to have a list of URLs for further study. Comments?
> Phil Sheppard wrote:
>
> http://www.vega.org.uk/home.html
>
> This could be a valuable resource for biomimetics education and
> profile. I notice it's not a word in the A-Z list of topics in the
> site. Anyone have any links to the people involved in the Vega Trust?
>
> Phil Sheppard
>
> Name: The Vega Science Trust
> Homepage.url
> The Vega Science Trust Homepage.url Type: unspecified type
> (application/octet-stream)
> Encoding: 7bit
--
Julian FV Vincent [log in to unmask]
Professor of Biomimetics office 01225 386596
Centre for Biomimetics & Natural Technologies mobile 07941 933901
Dept of Mechanical Engineering fax 01225 386928
The University
BATH BA2 7AY
http://www.bath.ac.uk/Departments/Eng/biomimetics/
I hate quotations. Tell me what you know. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
|