Question: which one of you believes that their project will benefit the community the most and why

Susan Cartwright answered on 21 Jun 2015:

First, let’s point out that the brief is to use the money to help the public engage with science, not to benefit the community (which community?) per se. Also, note that £500 isn’t very much money, so all these have to be very small projects, or else the money has to be combined with other funds. Of all the projects, Rob’s clearly needs more than £500 – he says so – and I think most of the others are going to need more as well. Maybe not Chris’s: he seems to know exactly what he wants, and may already know the prices.

I think my project will benefit the community by increasing the communication between the universities of Sheffield and the people of Sheffield. Sheffield has two large universities, us and Sheffield Hallam, but I think rather few people in Sheffield really have much idea what we do. Many of the people in the department – including me – are trying to change this, both by conventional methods like giving talks in schools and to societies and by more imaginative events: for example, several of my astronomy colleagues participated in a joint event with a local orchestra where the orchestra played Holst’s “The Planets” and in between the different music pieces we had short talks about aspects of astronomy. I hope my project will contribute to this by encouraging children and families to explore the University campus.

Rebecca’s project will certainly benefit the Deaf community, though £500 seems like not enough money (I’ve organised conferences, albeit not for Deaf people – it cost a lot more than £500!). We have had at least one profoundly deaf physics student here in Sheffield – she was really good, and encouraging Deaf people to participate in science can only be a good idea.

Rob’s “project” isn’t a project so much as a contribution towards a facility that would be used by many people. We’ve already got a 3D printer, and I can see that in some cases making custom-designed models might indeed be helpful in explaining science. Whether a 3D printer could make big enough models to be used in demonstrations isn’t clear – the models we’ve got all make rather small things – but perhaps you could make components and build larger things from them (we have a very impressive Lego model of the ATLAS detector!). I suppose the community Rob’s project will benefit is the community of scientists at Nottingham who would find the models useful in explaining their work.

Josh’s project has the potential to engage children in science. I’ve seen science-meets-art projects before and some of them are very good (and some of them aren’t). I’m not sure how many workshops you can run for £500 – it depends on what materials he is planning to provide. He’ll probably need some support from other people, but the project’s definitely got potential.

Chris’s project is another one that children should really enjoy – everyone likes to pop a balloon! – and is intended to do the same sort of thing as mine and Josh’s, though they’re all in different fields.

I think all the projects are worthwhile and would help to publicise science and encourage the public – specifically children in most cases and Deaf people using British Sign Language in Rebecca’s – to get more involved. So I think you shouldn’t worry about somebody using the £500 on something that won’t be worth doing!