On Saturday 3rd September, after years of Open Day dormancy, UNSW became a hive of activity – welcoming prospective, current and postgraduate students through its leafy boulevards to visit and discover all it had to offer.
Despite the shivering rain, UNSW Science had much to display, including Science Advisory Zones, Tours and Lectures – not to mention the all-day, cross-faculty events across campus.
Occupying the Globe Sculpture Lawns was a world of science stalls, the Advisory Zones: BEES, Aviation, Physics – each had an array of activities and physical demonstrations, surrounded continually by groups of curious students, pleased parents, and ran by enthusiastic volunteers.
Anyone lucky to visit and observe each of the stalls, the tours and lectures, would have been treated to the span of UNSW Science.
UNSW Chemistry had demonstrations of dry ice and thermodynamics, run by winner of this year’s 3 Minute Thesis, PhD candidate Merryn Baker. UNSW Physics demonstrated ‘Jacob’s Ladder’ whose voltage in overcoming resistance ionises the air forming a spark not unlike lightning. Also are demonstrations of sound, magnetism, and the power of viscosity in overcoming entropy.
School of Biological, Earth & Environmental Sciences prepared a lush array of their science, including peppermint stick insects whose evolution of all-female populations are piquing questions, sea slug love (whose copulation is, in fact, a joust between hermaphrodites as to who bears the children), whale snot-sampling drones, the model skulls of terror birds and ancestor Homo habilis (with native mint - brought fresh from our UNSW greenhouse in the foreground).
UNSW Psychology presented the science of EEG tests, with caps and model brains, as well as the science of facial discrimination – the human capacity to discern AI-generated versus undoctored images. (Hint: AI isn’t very good with symmetry or ornaments such as glasses or earrings.)
The Science Theatre (F13) was host all day to lectures from Data Science & Decisions through to Medical Science, detailing to prospective students the courses and career paths available to them through and after their degree with UNSW Science.
“It will take $10 trillion and 500 years to make Mars liveable. What if we focused on our own planet instead?” was the question asked by the Earth Habitation Mission, located in the subterranean Esme Timbery Creative Practice Lab.
Entering the mission, participants were walked around sculptures evocative of Mars’ surface, and slices of the human condition, before viewing a film on humanity’s future. Passing through, or surfacing from, a sea-hued walkway, was a gallery of projects outlining the steps needed for the habitation not of Mars, but Earth.
Located in the Roundhouse was UNSW’s Hall of Fame, a theatre of monuments arranged in lanes down which viewers could wander and learn about the diversity of UNSW alumni whose achievements have contributed to a better society and planet.
