The Science Days 2009: a success!

28.09.2009

The “Science Days” is a good opportunity for GenØk to communicate to the public about what we do and why we do it.

The theme of the Science Days 2009 was “sustainability and evolution”. In our little exibition booth the visitors could experience the following:

Build a candy DNA model
“Seigmenn” in four colours + some toothpicks make for an excellent DNA model. Although we cannot take the credit for inventing this activity, we dare say that turned out to be a hit; it attracted a lot of people and was a useful device for learning about DNA, etc.

See the daphnia
The possibility to see daphnia with and without microscope turned out to be an audience-magnet with many high quality interactions between interested children, teenagers, adults and GenØk representatives.

GMO food vs. organic food questionnaire
Cao Yu managed to obtain a high number of respondents to his questionnaire. It will be interesting to see how the Norwegian results compare to his Chinese examinations. Like our other activities, the questionnaire often formed a starting point for discussions.

Dip-stick test for bt vs. non-bt maize
In this activity, visitors were asked whether they would be able to guess which sample of maize kernels had been genetically modified, and which had not. Then they would be able to check their guesses through a simple dip-stick test.