Sciku E-Book

Students of The Camden School for Girls

• Herausgeber: Icon Books
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 85

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

An attractive force Between all objects with mass Just like you and me Science is a thing of magic and wonder. It reveals complex patterns – and often thrilling chaos – at the heart of nature; the strange alchemy of reactions between invisible atoms; the bewildering origins of our universe; and the connections in our brains that create love, fear, joy – and poetry. Sciku brings together more than 400 revealing, poignant, witty haiku on scientific subjects. Written by students at The Camden School for Girls, these poems reflect on topics as varied as Newton's laws, climate change, time travel and evolution. They are also elegiac, enigmatic and often extremely beautiful. Dissolving confusion To some, solutions Are answers; to chemists they Are still all mixed up.

Leseprobe

SCIKU

Edited by Simon Flynn and Karen Scott

Published in the UK in 2014 by Icon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre, 39–41 North Road, London N7 9DP email: [email protected]

Sold in the UK, Europe and Asia by Faber & Faber Ltd, Bloomsbury House, 74–77 Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3DA or their agents

Distributed in the UK, Europe and Asia by TBS Ltd, TBS Distribution Centre, Colchester Road, Frating Green, Colchester CO7 7DW

Distributed in the USA by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution 34 13th Avenue NE, Suite 101 Minneapolis, MN 55413

Distributed in Australia and New Zealand by Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd, PO Box 8500, 83 Alexander Street, Crows Nest, NSW 2065

Distributed in South Africa by Jonathan Ball, Office B4, The District, 41 Sir Lowry Road, Woodstock 7925

Distributed in Canada by Publishers Group Canada, 76 Stafford Street, Unit 300 Toronto, Ontario M6J 2S1

ISBN: 978-184831-794-9

Text copyright © 2014 The Camden School for Girls

The authors have asserted their moral rights

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Typeset by Marie Doherty

Printed and bound in the UK by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc

CONTENTS

Foreword

Introduction

Setting the scene

He-He-He

Look to the heavens

The splendour of life

Everything under the Sun

Let’s get physic-al

The rhythm of life

The big picture

Random walks in science

Science at CSG

Contributors

Acknowledgements

FOREWORD

Writers have always drawn inspiration from science, perhaps most remarkably in poetry. Over two thousand years ago the Ancient Roman poet Lucretius sought to explain the world through observable physical principles. Two hundred years ago the Romantic Lord Byron wrote ‘Darkness’, a chilling verse portrayal of a world without sun, and in recent times the poet Lavinia Greenlaw has been in residence at both the Science Museum and the Royal Society of Medicine. Poetry and science have certainly developed an extraordinarily fruitful relationship over the years and it is a great pleasure to see students at The Camden School for Girls continuing that tradition of expressing in poetic terms the excitement and wonder of science.

As you dip into this extraordinary anthology, you will be amazed, amused and absorbed in equal measure. I hope that you will learn something new, but I am certain that you will feel great admiration for the students who have captured the thrill of their scientific and literary learning in such neat, economical use of language. I am very proud of all the students who contributed their work to a publication that will enable us to continue fund-raising for science and for the high quality of education generally in the school. I would like to thank Simon Flynn and Karen Scott for making this unique book happen. Finally my thanks go to the writers themselves, whose work will now encourage others to think poetically about science.

Elizabeth Kitcatt Headteacher, The Camden School for Girls

INTRODUCTION

The world of science is an endlessly fascinating one, by turns intriguing, stimulating and thought-provoking. Yet all too often, when you ask adults about their experience of science at school, their response is a negative one: they were bored by it; they hated the practicals; they struggled with equations. Even some of those who have come to love it in later life didn’t enjoy it at the time. Partly, of course, this is about the provision of school science a generation or two ago, didactic lessons taught with the aid of a blackboard and from behind a large and forbidding desk. And perhaps too it is about the nature of learning the foundations of science: establishing the basics of any subject is, after all, rarely as interesting as exploring the possibilities it later has to offer.

For many adults, though, their response to science echoes one of the dichotomies into which life can too easily be channelled: they were an arts person, not a science person; as a girl they didn’t really do science – or perhaps they were a boy resistant to being pushed away from the arts and towards science, as was at one time all too commonplace. Mirroring C.P. Snow’s idea of ‘two cultures’, we seem to pigeonhole ourselves as individuals into ‘Science and Maths’ or ‘English and the Arts’. The beauty of the Sciku project is that it has combined both skill-sets, often seemingly polarised, enabling the pupils at The Camden School for Girls to play with language and literacy in order to communicate something scientifically complex concisely and imaginatively. This wasn’t a forced or frivolous task. As Max Planck, the person who ushered in the quantum age, said, a pioneering scientist ‘must have a vivid intuitive imagination, for new ideas are not generated by deduction, but by artistically creative imagination’.

Whether you’re male or female, child or adult, someone with an arts degree or someone already interested in the subject, science is full of wonder, and in this series of haiku, we wanted to share the sheer fun and enjoyment of the subject with everyone, allowing you to learn something new or see it afresh in an unusual format. These haiku celebrate science in all its glory for readers everywhere and at every stage of their lives.

The act of adapting Japanese haiku, traditionally seventeen-syllable poems focusing on nature, into short poems about all things scientific – or ‘sciku’ – has in turn demonstrated the nature of our students: intelligent, inquiring, straight-talking, funny and at times downright bizarre. The range of poems that has been created in this book is testament to the enthusiasm the girls have for science and for expressing themselves confidently.

It began with the opening of a Year 10 chemistry lesson, when the girls were asked to write a haiku on polymers, which they’d learned about during the previous lesson. They embraced the task with real gusto and those haiku shared with the class proved to be witty, inventive and, most importantly, accurate in their science.

Next came a whole school science haiku competition, which ran during National Science & Engineering Week in March 2014. The winner (Jasmine Morris in Year 7) proved that poetry and physics can be combined to make something exciting:

A fallen apple Eureka, it’s gravity! Shame about the bruise.

Finally, there is the book now in front of you. The students worked across the curriculum, spending time in both English and Science lessons, writing their poems and editing their work before submission. Each year group from Year 7 (aged eleven) to Year 12 (aged seventeen) was involved, and so the poetry spans a breadth of knowledge and abilities.

Our editorial team, made up of around twelve Year 9s and 10s (thirteen and fourteen year-olds), has been central in making decisions about this book. Giving up their lunchtimes to learn about the publishing process, discuss cover designs, select layouts and debate fonts, they have been lively and collaborative; keen to take ownership of the project.

It is vital that girls everywhere begin to see themselves as credible, erudite scientists who can go on to lead and be pioneering within science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers. Even now it is still far too widely believed that girls can’t – or just plain don’t – do science as much as boys. This is a troublesome echo from a time when girls weren’t afforded the same opportunities as boys, when society was convinced that science favoured the male mind. Instead, women like Caroline Herschel, Marie-Anne Paulze Lavoisier and Ada Lovelace were obliged to play a supporting role to their brothers, husbands and male colleagues. Even though their efforts frequently proved vital, they themselves were often invisible when the history books were written.

The gender imbalance within science has recently been in the news again, and perhaps it continues because of unconscious societal attitudes and even the toys and books that young boys and girls are given. Our technology department has this year run a project entitled ‘Disrupting the pink aisle’ in which students created designs for toys that would help foster and encourage girls as well as boys towards STEM. The feminist ethos at our school is strong, and we hope to play our part in changing the landscape of science by helping our girls to explore and feel confident.

The students at CSG are relentless at raising money for different charities. In 2013, four thirteen year-old Camden girls, part of the ‘6girlsnobuoys’ team, swam the English Channel, breaking world records to raise funds for the school. We hope that the proceeds from this book will raise further, much-needed funds for the refurbishment of our ageing science labs (which date back to the 1960s) and help to give our students a better start in their science careers.

We hope too that you’ll join with us in marvelling at the science here conveyed in delightfully succinct haikus, and that you’ll have as much fun reading this book as the girls – and a few sixth form boys too! – had in producing it.

Simon Flynn Karen Scott

Scikulogical barriers

To explain science In seventeen syllables Is really quite hard

SETTING THE SCENE

Science

It baffles your brain

But when you understand it

Satisfaction gained

The point of science

Science: created

To unravel the many

Mysteries of life.

A never-ending story

Science, what is it?

A pile of endless questions

Never to finish

What is it good for?

I think science means

A search for truthful answers

To stranger questions

Science vs. religion

Hot single dense point,

Big ginormous bang and that

Is how time began.

Seven days to make,

He has capability

To shape this wide world.

Spirit in the sky?

Or bang starting creation?

How did it begin?

It is argued that science and religion occupy themselves with separate questions – science deals with ‘how’ and religion aims to answer ‘why’. Of course, science would argue that there is no need for the second.

Neutral science

Ever wondered if

Science is always what’s good?

For ev’ry action

There is always an

Equal/opp’site reaction.

It is up to us.

Have faith

There is a fine line