Sports Alive, an interactive exhibition developed by Science Alive!,  provided a fun way for visitors to explore the science and technology behind popular sports.

Visitors ran, jumped, kicked, threw and raced through challenges from ten different sports, competing against friends and family. Challenges included cycling and rowing races, ball passing and throwing competitions, and tests of speed and accuracy.

Visitors could compare the kilojoules burned playing different sports, find out how the sports compared in developing stamina, speed, coordination and muscles, and test their reaction time and balancing skills.

Sports Alive offered a stimulating environment where visitors were encouraged to get active, while learning about how science and technology can make a difference to their sporting performance. The exhibition was hugely popular with both children and adults and has since travelled to other venues in New Zealand.

Exploring the science and technology behind popular sports

Visitors compete in sporting challenges with family and friends to test their sporting skills, while discovering the physics, biology and technologies behind the sports. Through interactive exhibits, sports alive! makes learning about the scientific principles behind sport fun, interesting and entertaining (plus a little exhausting!).

Touring Exhibition

sports alive! is designed and constructed for touring.

Backdrops and booths are easy to set up and pack down, and fabricated from strong, lightweight materials. Exhibition graphics feature bright energetic colours and images, and contain useful, interesting information for visitors. The exhibition environment uses big screen monitors, sports equipment, state-of-the-art simulators and speed radar. Ball exhibits are contained within safety nets.

Goals

• to show the science and technology behind the sports
• to provide a stimulating environment where visitors are
• encouraged to get active
• to promote participation in sport through activities and
• sports organisation involvement
• to create fun, challenging learning experience for all ages.

Target Audience

Like sport, everyone! Families, friends, students, young and old. Through a range of popular sports – cricket, netball, basketball, rugby, rowing, golf, cycling, football – the exhibition has wide appeal. For schools and education groups, sports alive! provides an informative interactive educational experience.

The Components

sports alive! consists of eight stations based around popular sports and is supported by additional exhibits.

Stations include:

• a physical activity for visitors to test their performance and compete against others
• graphics panels with user instructions and a science or technology concept behind the exhibit
• challenge cards for visitors to complete.

The exhibition may be supplemented by the host venue with local and community input – sports groups, sports medicine providers, retailers and manufacturers of sporting equipment.

The Stations

• Ball Throw
  Throw the ball at the target and test your speed and accuracy. How fast can you throw a ball? The speed of the throw is measured by speed radar and displayed on a monitor. Find out how to throw fast and accurately. Learn about radar guns and the Doppler Effect.

• Basketball
  Compete in a free throw shoot out. Is your shot ‘soft’ or a ‘brick’? Who has the shooter’s touch? Find out how to successfully shoot a free throw using backspin and forces. Learn about muscle memory and visualisation.

• Cycling
  Compete against a friend in a race to the finish line. Who has the legs to win the leader’s yellow jersey? The exhibit uses high tech cycling trainers and visitors monitor their progress on the screen. What happens when the wind speed increases? Find out about aerodynamic drag and streamlining.

• Football
  Challenge a friend to a penalty shootout. Who has the accuracy, speed and power to score a goal? The speed of the kick is measured by radar. Find out about momentum and sports.

• Golf
  Compete in a putting contest. Try different clubs. How do they affect your performance. Will you hit a hole in one? Find out how to hole the ball and learn about golf clubs and competitive advantage in sport.

• Netball
  Test your goal shooting skills. Are you a sharp shooter? Find out about projectiles and trajectories in sport.

• Rowing
  Compete against a friend in a rowing race. Test your rowing technique and stamina. Visitors race against each other in a simulated race using rowing ergometers and can watch their progress in the race on the monitor.

• Rugby
  Pass the ball through the target. How does the shape of the ball affect your throw?

Additional Exhibits

• Reaction Time
  How fast are you? Hit the corresponding coloured light and see your time displayed. Who has the fastest reaction time?

• Nutrition Wheel
  How many kilojoules in your favourite foods? How many kilojoules do you burn playing your favourite sport? Turn the wheel to find out.

• Balance Test
  How good is your balance? Stand on the balancing board and watch the timer. Find out how your eyes, ears, brain and muscles work together to keep you balanced.

• Horizontal and Vertical Jump
  How much force is in your jump and landing? Jump onto and off the platforms to compare the force of jumping vs landing. A graph on the monitor shows the force of your jump in Newtons. How far can you jump horizontally? How much force is in your take off compared with your landing? Find out about ground reaction forces and how athletes reduce the effects of impact.

• Sprint
  Find out if your sport is good for developing stamina, speed, coordination and muscles. Try another sport. How does it compare?

• Compare Sports
  When the light turns green, sprint as fast as you can to the end. Your time is displayed on the readout.

In 2005, a scheme aimed at conserving the threatened New Zealand falcon was established in Marlborough. The scheme translocates falcon chicks from their nests in the mountains, and into the vineyard dominated valleys, where it was assumed falcons would thrive. It was also thought the falcons would benefit the vineyards by acting as a natural form of pest control against the birds that cause millions of dollars worth of grape damage each year.

The Brian Mason Scientific and Technical Trust has provided a grant to University of Canterbury researchers which is being used to assess the efficacy of this scheme as both a conservation and pest management regime. This research includes monitoring the behaviour of nesting falcons using remote videography, conducting observations of juvenile falcons, testing nest predation rates, conducting pest-bird abundance surveys, and collecting data on the levels of grape damage in vineyards with and without falcons.

nestcam shot of feral cat predating falcon nest - Sara Kross

We have found that reintroducing the threatened New Zealand falcon into vineyards reduces both the abundance of, and the damage caused by, pest birds, equating to potential savings of over 300 USD/ha-1. Our findings also provide insight into the foraging and antipredator behaviour of pest birds in vineyards. These results provide the first example of a raptor conservation initiative benefitting agriculture, and have applications for global horticulture and arable farming.

Other regions in NZ, such as Canterbury where pest birds cause serious levels of damage to arable crops, have already shown interest in implementing similar schemes.

In this project we seek to investigate kea cleverness using field-based methods and in the absence of anthropocentric assumptions that often affect the design of lab-based cognition studies. Lab-based cognition studies on kea consistently find that these animals are unusually intelligent, but similar studies in the field fail to replicate these results- perhaps as a consequence of experiments not actually testing kea cognitive ability as expressed in nature. Many clever animals use complex forms of communication in social groups. Previous work has suggested that the vocal repertoire of kea is rather limited. In this study we are characterising the vocalisations of kea, determining their biological significance through playback studies, and exploring whether kea use different calls depending on the acoustic characteristics of the habitat in which they are calling.

Results so far are promising, with over a dozen different calls tentatively identified, some of which are only produced by animals of certain age groups. Insight from this work may provide us with appropriate methodology with which to explore the true cognitive capacity of these charismatic birds.

Hundreds if not thousands of people headed towards the Liffey domain in Lincoln on the 3^rd and 4^th of April, 2009. A number of scientists including the famous TV “Bugman” (Ruud Kleinpaste) set the scene for Lincoln Primary kids with talks at the school on Friday afternoon, so by after school when the event started at 3.15 half the school children and many of their parents were ready to follow Ruud along the stream to collect bugs. He was like the Pied Piper of Hamlin with a crowd of children following him with more joining as the ever increasing group made their way along the stream bank. Over the 24 hours the large team of scientists from Lincoln University and Landcare Research took groups of people to look for specific types of living things as well as manned the microscopes to identify the samples that the public brought in. There were also many talks and displays, all on the theme of biodiversity.

The BioBlitz at Lincoln’s Liffey Stream, organised by The Lincoln Envirotown Trust, found an amazing 1642 different kinds of life, almost half of them species of bacteria. That’s a lot of things for a small stretch of stream side in a small rural town. They included many surprises, including a native flatworm that had not been recorded in over a hundred years, a European fungus of acorns never before collected in New Zealand, a Banks Peninsula endemic spider usually found in forests, and two unidentified endemic earthworms.

While most of the little creepy-crawlies like mites and spiders were native species, plants and fungi they crawled on were mostly wild exotic species. 20% of the plants were native but most of these have been recently planted. Of the wild (self-propagated) plant species found, only 9% were native. This is a reflection of the massive transformation to the flora that has occurred on the Canterbury Plains in the past two centuries. It is promising that some natives have been recently planted back into the area. There is great potential for improvement.

Most birds were also wild exotics (the “non-wild” exotics were recent escapes such as a canary), a reflection of how much the Canterbury Plains has changed. Only three of New Zealand’s native land birds were found in the area: one singing bellbird, a grey warbler, and several fantails. There was a surprise sighting of a white heron. Similarly, none of the butterfly species unique to New Zealand were found. Only the European cabbage white butterfly and North American monarch butterfly were present.

While it is sad that the proportion of natives seems to be small, the efforts by the locals to increase the planting of natives and so to increase the suitable habitat for native animals is encouraging. Perhaps a future Bioblitz will show a big increase in natives.

Click image to enlarge

The following is the text of the Final Report on this project as presented to the Brian Mason Scientific & Technological Trust.

Supporting graphs and photographs are courtesy of Laura Boren of the University of Canterbury, who carried out fieldwork for this project.

Project title

Assessing the Impacts of Tourism on Fur Seals

Project leader

Dr. Neil J. Gemmell

Contact address: Department of Zoology, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch

Address where project can be viewed: Department of Zoology

Project aim

To examine if ecotourism activities impact on fur seal behaviour

Key objectives

To determine how fur seal behaviour is modified in response to tourism activities. Specifically we will identify what fur seal responses are directly attributable to tourist activities, which responses are significant in terms of the ecology and behaviour of fur seals, and what management measures we might introduce to minimise the detrimental effects of tourist disturbance on fur seals.

Summary of key results/achievements

Fur seal colonies at Kaikoura, Tonga Island and Banks Peninsula reflecting a spectrum of visitor density, type of tourism, and anticipated fur seal sensitivity were studied during the Austral summers of 1999/2000 and 2000/2001. The behaviours of seals at all three sites were observed using focal animal and instantaneous scan sampling, while attributes of tourist approaches were tested experimentally using controlled approaches by land, kayak and powerboat. The following factors were manipulated: distance, noise, approach frequency and the size of group approaching.

Instantaneous scans showed that fur seals exhibit significant changes in behaviour in response to tourist disturbance, while controlled approaches indicate that fur seals respond more strongly to land-based approaches than sea-based approaches. The response of seals to different types of approaches also varied by site with more avoidance responses displayed at the control site. These results collectively indicate that fur seals are changing their behaviour in response to tourist activities and that seals will habituate over time in areas of high tourist activity, suggesting that current management guidelines are not preventing negative impacts in tourist-fur seal interactions and need to be revised.

In keeping with the wishes of the Trust this research has been disseminated widely at public and scientific meetings, in the popular press, and in scientific publications. Notable among these are two scientific papers currently in review with Australian Mammalogy, a comprehensive research report currently under review by the Department of Conservation, and an M.Sc. thesis completed by my student Laura Boren.

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The International Centre for Nature Conservation

Canterbury is fortunate to have excellent water resources which stem from mountain rivers and lakes.

We need to protect the se resources from the impacts of farming, urban development and industry by sustainable management of our waterways.

The International Centre for Nature Conservation at Lincoln University, has developed a new initiative to assess our water resources and promote environmental awareness. Scientists from the Environmental Management and Design Division at Lincoln University have used their expertise to develop a simple and interactive method for teaching the techniques needed to monitor water.

Waterwatch is an interactive programme designed to involve school students and community groups in monitoring their local waterways. The programme uses a water monitoring kit especially designed to make water monitoring safe, fun and accessible to all age groups. The Waterwatch programme has been tailored to fit with school curricula and comes with trained coordinators. Most importantly it is offered FREE to schools.

The Waterwatch programme has been assisted by a grant from The Brian Mason Scientific & Technical Trust.

Waterwatch provides the expertise and equipment to enable students to accurately measure physical, chemical and biological indicators of water quality.

Waterwatch is adaptable for students from years 6 to 13 and is recommended for all science subjects but is especially relevant to environmental science modules. The data collected is used to build up a database of local water conditions and has been used successfully for science projects and exhibitions. The data can also be used to demonstrate basic statistical techniques such as confidence intervals and error terms.

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]]> http://www.brianmasontrust.org/news/waterwatch-the-international-centre-for-nature-conservation/feed/ 0 http://www.brianmasontrust.org/news/science-alive/ http://www.brianmasontrust.org/news/science-alive/#comments Wed, 02 Jun 2010 20:35:34 +0000 admin http://www.scitech-trust.org.nz/blog/?p=208

The first grant from the Brian Mason Scientific & Technical Trust was made to ‘Science Alive!’, an exhibition centre in Christchurch, New Zealand. The trust made a substantial grant to the ‘Falling Mountains’ exhibit which explains the geology leading to the Mount Cook rock avalanche.

This imaginative touch screen interactive takes the operator through the Mt. Cook phenomenon. The force, mass and weight of the slip are in easy to understand terms, like truckloads. In addition to the great Mt. Cook slip, the ‘Falling Mountains’ explores geological forces that can crumble mountains.

Science Alive! is a registered charitable trust which began operating in 1992. Science Alive! is currently the only science center in New Zealand that remains independent of other museum or local authority control, it is largely self-funded through public admissions. It relies heavily on donations to fabricate new and exciting exhibitions and develop new education programs.

From the beginning a strong education and entertainment base has been the corner stone of their operation. Science Alive! is contracted by the Ministry of Education to provide LEOTC (Learning Experiences Outside the Classroom) Education Programmes on a variety of science and technology topics to schools in the Canterbury, West Coast, Nelson and Marlborough areas.

The Science Alive! Workshop has a growing reputation for designing and building innovative, cost effective exhibits for science centres and museums worldwide.

Science Alive! is located at 392 Moorhouse Avenue, Christchurch and is open to the public everyday from 10am to 5pm everyday (except Christmas Day and Exhibition change overs).

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