Science 

International Science School 2021

Krishna and I were extremely fortunate to be offered a Professor Harry Messel International Science School Scholars for 2021; only 113 students were offered this across Australia. The ISS is usually a two-week program that hosts 140 students (from Australia and 10 other countries) at the University of Sydney every two years. The ISS program was started in 1958 by Professor Harry Messel with a  focus on science education for senior high school students, in order to encourage talented young people to pursue further studies and careers in science.

This year, the ISS program went online for the first time due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The camp was held between the 5th and 9th of July through online platforms such as Zoom and Discord, during the July school holidays. The five day program had a timetable consisting of lectures, live lab tours and workshops in the fields of Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Mathematics.

The lecture series brought world-leading scientists from Australia and across the world to talk about their cutting-edge research and its implications to the world. Some of the lectures included topics such as Cosmology, Computational Neuroscience, High Efficiency Solar Cell Technology, NASA and Mars and a Science Party by the world famous Dr. Karl Kruszelnicki. These lectures provided us real life situations of ongoing research and the ability to interact with the Professors about their field.

The lab tours were run from Laboratories at the University of Sydney, from the Australian Centre for Field Robotics, the Perovskite Research Group and the Kwan Lab. These tours provided an insight into the facilities and the methods in which each of the researchers conduct experiments.

The workshops were hands-on projects where we built a spectroscope for Physics, conducted experiments to prove that face covering protect the public from bio aerosols for Biology, grew crystals and tried to disprove the second law of thermodynamics in Chemistry, and we calculated the value of pi and checked if there was a relationship between pi and phi. These workshops allowed the scholars to prove and have an inquiring mind to understand the foundations of STEM.

We also had a games night, movie night and an online quiz to keep the spirit of ISS going, and to encourage us to mingle and make new friends. Although the camp ran over five days, it seemed to have gone by very quickly. This program has increased my passion and interest in STEM and opened my eyes to the wide range of opportunities present in the science fields.

This camp will be running again in 2022, and will be in-person, with a two-week stay in Sydney. I would highly recommend anyone interested to keep an eye out and contact Ms Matejin for more details.

Opals for Chemistry

DIY Spectroscope

Crystal

Aishwarya Lakshmi (Year 12)