Science Festival visitors

We have had a very busy week with visitors from the Science Festival coming in to school to speak to us.
On Tuesday we were lucky enough to meet Dr Maria Pia Casarini Wadhams from Fermo in Italy.She is the director of a Polar Museum and has a special interest in Polar explorers. She talked to us about our own explorer, John Rae and about how she hopes to help celebrate his bicentenary next year. She has visited Orkney for the Science festival many times and has a great enthusiasm for our Islands. Here is a link to the website for her museum. Unless you understand Italian though you may want to use the translated version!
http://www.museopolare.it/

Our second visitor, Alison McLure, is the National Officer (Scotland)of the Institute of Physics and she has led expeditions to do scientific research in the Arctic and was able to tell us what it is like to live with such cold temperatures and basic resources. She had photographs of spectacular scenery from Svalbard where she was based. It was interesting to hear how they travelled over the snow, cooked their food and slept in tents. The favourite part for everyone seemed to be about how they kept themselves safe from polar bears by setting up a trip wire that triggers a flare to create light and noise and scare the bear away.

We asked questions about how they coped with ordinary things like the toilet and not being able to have a bath or shower. She made it all sound so interesting that some of us think we would like to go on an expedition in a few years. You need to be at least 17 to join.

Here is a link to the IOP Scotland site.

  http://iopscotland.org/ 

Both visitors were impressed with the listening skills displayed and enjoyed their visits very much.