Science for schools 2020

For the 6th time, 10th and 12th grade Tromsø school kids had their own conference during Arctic Frontiers. Science for Schools was arranged in cooperation with Vitensenteret, Arctic Frontiers and APECS.

During three days, early career researchers gave plenary lectures with hands-on experiences in the morning that were followed by poster presentations of the school kids and a science show in the afternoon. The plenary talks by early career researchers featured microplastics and invasive species in the Barents Sea (Anna Gebruk, University of Edinburgh, UK), The Climate-ecological Observation System for the Arctic Tundra (Leif Einar Støvern, UiT The University of Tromsø, Norway), bio-based agents for oil spill treatment in Arctic environments (Ariadna Szczybelski, UiT in collaboration with SINTEF Ocean AS in Trondheim, Norway), marine fungi (Brandon Hassett, UiT The University of Tromsø, Norway) and permafrost presented in the Frozen Ground Cartoons (Frédéric Bouchard, Université Paris Saclay, France).

The poster presenters, a science show in Vitensenter, and the remote presentation about the Frozen Ground Cartoons. All photos: Andrea Schneider.

The school kids had picked a topic of their interest and prepared a poster about it; the most popular topics in 2020 were (micro-)plastic and heavy metal pollution and its impact on the Arctic ecosystem and food web, climate warming and ocean acidification, sea ice decline, oil spills and shipping industry in the Arctic ocean. All posters were presented to and evaluated by early career researchers who were impressed by the quality of all posters, the student's attention to detail and global understanding of their topics.

Each day, the best presentation was awarded with a culture card for Tromsø. The winner of the day on Tuesday is the poster on “Permafrost - and why we need to prevent it from thawing” by students from Sommerlyst High School. The winner of the day on Thursday is the poster on “How does Global warming affect the Ocean” by two students from Tromstun High School. The overall winner of the 10th graders was the poster entitled “No Fish on their Dish” from Tromsø International School. Their price is a visit to the Kongsberg satellite observation and research facility in Tromsø for the entire school class.

The 12th grade winner poster was called “Sealife on Acid” and was a study about the effects of ocean acidification on blue mussels from students of Kongsbakken Videregående Skole. The 12th graders price is a visit to a research site that focuses on fish and marine food products (Havbruksstasjonen) near Tromsø for the entire school class. A report and photos are published on the school`s webpage (in Norwegian).