Neave

School Science Ambassador

What do you do?

I am 11 years old and I became a Science Ambassador when I was in year 4. I am so glad I did! I love science because it is so interesting and has given me the opportunity to be involved in so many fun experiments! I’ve met so many amazing people who have inspired me. My favourite day as an Ambassador was spent at Durham University meeting and interviewing different physicists. I loved meeting Dr Ryan Cooke. He shared his passion for astronomy and has made me want to be an astronomer too!

How are you involved in this area of science? 

We trained to be science ambassadors by completing lots of different investigations and explaining what we did. We showcased our favourite experiment to different schools to build our confidence. We then start training to film and interview a range of physicists!  

We created a list of questions, which we thought primary aged children would be interested in hearing about. We thought of different professions that would link to our curriculum and invited them to be interviewed. 

We interviewed 13 people in one day from astronomers to experimental physicists! We set up our filming equipment, helped our professional feel comfortable and asked them a series of questions. One person filmed while the other interviewed. We then edited our films back at school to create a video and added in some animations. We feel very proud we were able to be involved in every part of the creation of our videos!  

What do you love about this topic?

We loved every part of our project! It helped our confidence so much. We gained so much knowledge and it enhanced our digital skills too as we filmed and edited our own films.  

At first, we thought it would be really scary to be on camera but we got used to it quickly and now we love it!  

Our favourite part has to be meeting the professionals, who we never thought we would ever get to meet – let alone interview! The experience of seeing where they work and getting to hear about their jobs was phenomenal! It made us realise there are so many opportunities in science.  

How does this work deliver real-world impact?

We love knowing we have helped give other children a better understanding of different roles in science. We like to think that we have inspired others to go into science or just enjoy the science they’re doing!  

We hope our project was inspirational. Our aim was to inspire people all over the country, and possibly the world to engage and enjoy science and to consider different jobs in science. In our school, we were able to educate our friends about different jobs and get them excited about engaging with science! We helped run different science activities like the Crest Award around school and science ambassador events which got the whole school active. We helped train new ambassadors from different schools and showed them what it is like to be an ambassador!