At the Redland Museum 12th Aug ’24
John VK4JBE, Bill VK4BUL and Bob VK4YA attended the BDARS stand on the “Switch on to Science Day” event held by the Redland Museum.
Despite the rainy weather, Parents and children attended in good numbers and came to see all the wonders of science. BDARS couldn’t surpass the attraction of the the laser show (strictly educational !) put on by the Surfing Scientist, Ruben Meerman, but we think we did pretty well with our range of exhibits and demos:-
Bill, VK4BUL was showing the youngsters that radios don’t have to have batteries or power supplies, and that years ago crystal sets were exploiting a newly discovered property of nature called a ‘semiconductor’ found in rocks of lead-sulfide (Galena). Nowadays we call the component it created a ‘diode’.
John, VK4JBE brought along two of his full-size Cubesat working replicas. These transmitted and received all forms of digital content including slow-scan images from a camera mounted inside one of his satellites.
The children and parents were amazed by the size of these tiny satellites and how many were in orbit just a few hundred Km above our heads.
Bob, VK4YA grabbed a ‘real radio’ from the stores, and also demonstrated how a $30 USB dongle can be used to get started in the hobby using a piece of wire for an antenna and a laptop computer.
It was a good day well spent and a privilege to be able to try and help inspire some of the youngsters (and parents) about the exciting field of science – there are so many discoveries that many people don’t know about.
We also gave away a few BDARS fridge magnets, coasters and flyers to our most interested visitors.
Thanks to the friendly museum staff and their volunteers, we were all well looked after with cakes, sausages and plenty of hot drinks right throughout the day 🙂
