On Saturday we all headed to London for my stint at SoapBox Science. It was the perfect day for it- sunny and bright but not too hot. We got to Observation Point at around 1:15 and I checked in with the team and got my station set up; I was on first and it was breezy enough for me to be very grateful we’d brought tape to stick the Great Eggspectations game boards down onto the table.
People were milling around all the time, and as soon as I was at my table with everything set up, they began approaching me even though it was before 2pm- I think because we had the great idea of putting my mini-egg cakes out on the table. I had spent most of Friday making 48 of them!
So I started playing the game with people a while before the official start time. There are pictures of the game board and instructions in my previous post. After a little while I realised that I could explain the game to kids and at the same time talk in more detail about the science to their parents; this allowed more discussions to happen and I got some insightful and interesting questions from adults and kids. The hour went so quickly, and I had really useful help throughout from Eleanor Stewart from Imperial who had volunteered to help out.
I’m almost sad it’s over- I had a blast planning for it and doing it, and I really hope I can find a way of using Great Eggspectations again, as I think it worked as intended and showed the people who played how complex it can be for birds to fledge a nest. So many times people got to four out of the five butterflies they needed to win, and then drew bad weather or a predator, and there was lots of laughter when cyclones happened.
Because of how the game worked I didn’t end up actually standing on my soapbox the entire time, but Tom got a photo of me on it at the end. Fabulous day out and I really recommend finding a SoapBox near you and going along to hear about the science that is happening in your area.
