Do you like running, jogging or even just walking? If you do, there is a brand new free, immersive running app for mobile phones for British Science Week. It is called Run to the deep. As you run over a 10K distance, the app works to take you on a journey from the sea surface to the Marianas Trench, the deepest part of the world’s oceans. The narrator tells you stories of amazing seascapes, strange creatures and human exploration as you travel to the seabed.

The website www.runtothedeep.com is already live for sign-ups. The race will then be available for anyone in the world to download for free and run during British Science Week (09 – 18 March 2018). Runners will be put on a leaderboard for participants to track their performance against one another.

As it is British Science Week we will be asking our pupils and parents to take part in a Citizen Science project online. The project is named ‘The Plastic Tide’ after the charity that is running it. Plastic Tide is  an organisation  made up of ocean, science and technology enthusiasts committed to  working out ways to clean up our oceans of marine litter and plastic. Ocean waste is having a huge impact on wildlife, as many of our  sea creatures are eating litter and plastic and getting trapped in plastics, which is harming them and the food chain – which could even include us!

The project  works by asking members of the public to tag images of the coast that contain pieces of litter. During British Science Week, we want you to help  tag some of 250,000 images. You only need to spend 15 minutes  clicking on pieces of litter in beach  images to help the project. This will help to create a machine learning algorithm that can automatically detect, identify and monitor marine litter in images supplied by armies of drones surveying beaches.

To get started, go to: https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/theplastictide/the-plastic-tide 

or you can access the Citizen Science project on The British Science Week 2018 webpage. You will need to register to take part, choosing a username and password which you will need to sign in, before you tag the images. Instructions are provided on what to do and how to identify the different types of plastics.

Each tag you provide will help the algorithm to detect thousands, even hundreds of thousands more litter items. This algorithm will be  freely available for scientists, companies, governments, beach clean organisations, to understand where, what type and when litter builds up on our coastlines. This will help millions of marine animals.

Thank you for taking part.

Miss Brooks

British Science Week runs from 9th-18th March this year and our school  is involved in this. Pupils will be taking part in British Science Week experiments in class. The pupils are also asked to take part in a poster competition on the theme of exploration and discovery. This can be done as a Science homework activity. They can make their poster about anything to do with exploration and discovery and their poster should include pictures and words.

For example, this could be about everyday inventions that have made our lives easier, discoveries in medicine, space or deep sea exploration, advances in technology such as artificial intelligence or discoveries made in archaeology or in nature.

There are three age categories for taking part: P1-Early years, P2-P4 Infant and P5-P7 Junior. Pupil’s posters will be judged in their  own age category. Pupils should add their names, ages, age categories and school name to the back of their poster. If pupils wish to create a group poster all their details should be on the back and the poster will be judged in the age category of the oldest child in the group.

There are many Science related  prizes to be won such as books, experiment sets, magazines and more.

The five best  posters from our school will be sent off along with entry forms, to be judged by The British Science Association. The poster should be 2D and completed on one side of an A4 or A3 white paper.  No templates should be used to create it. Parents can assist pupils to find relevant ideas online or in books but the poster itself should be the pupil’s own work. All posters should be handed in to school by  the 23rd March to allow us to send the final entries in for the 6th April.