The Dragon LNG Darwin Experience celebrated British Science Week with pupils from across the county last month, and were honoured to co-host Professor Robert Winston for his first lectures in Pembrokeshire.
The week of events started with Ysgol Caer Elen who took part in an ocean plastics and plankton session which involved a beach clean on Freshwater West and sweeping up microplastics from the strandline, before heading into the classroom to consider the impact of plastic on food chains and to examine microplastics and locally caught plankton samples under a stereomicroscope.
The Darwin Experience and Pembrokeshire College were honoured to co-host Professor Robert Winston for an evening lecture for the public in the Merlin Theatre with well over 200 attendees which was entitled ‘Can Science Make Us Happy?’
The following morning, Professor Winston was joined by biology students from - Pembrokeshire College, Haverfordwest High VC, Greenhill School and Henry Tudor School for a thought-provoking lecture on ‘Dangerous Genetics and Eradicating Disease?’
For the first time since October 2019, British Science Week also saw the return of Darwin’s most popular event, Science Aglow.
This event has been running since 2001 and aims to showcase different organisations working within the STEM sector in Pembrokeshire and highlight potential careers in the STEM industry.
Pupils from Fenton Community Primary School, Cleddau Reach VC Primary School, Monkton Priory Community Primary School, and St Mark’s CIW VA School attended the event, bringing with them a science investigation to present to the Darwin team to develop their science communication skills.
The pupils took part in a round robin of STEM workshops, delivered by Nadia and Nicole from the Sea Trust, Lottie, and Nat from Câr-y-Môr and Ginny from the Pembrokeshire Hogspital with Tilly and Georgia, animal management students from Pembrokeshire College.
The day concluded with a careers talk from Emma Williams, Celtic Deep, who gave the pupils an overview of ‘The Life of a Marine Biologist’ and an insight into shark research and conservation. The week ended as it started, with a beach clean.
This time it was with Ysgol Ger y Llan who collected over 9kg of rubbish from Newport Sands.
Samantha Williams, manager of the Dragon LNG Darwin Experience said: “It was a fantastic week in which we worked with over 600 people, the majority of which were pupils.
“We were honoured to co-host such an eminent scientist as Professor Winston with Pembrokeshire College and it was fantastic to have Science Aglow return as an in-person event.
“We were impressed with the calibre of science investigations from the schools that attended and incredibly grateful to the amazing organisations that gave up their time to make the event such a success.
“Thanks to our funding from Dragon LNG all our events are free to schools, opening up access to STEM subjects and hopefully inspiring the next generation of scientists.”
