Adding Bright Sparks to a Hospital Day

Ensuring that children in hospital had an opportunity to take part in the Science Week celebrations the RDS Science Live series ran an interactive ‘Bright Sparks’ workshop in Our Lady’s Hospital School located in Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital, Crumlin.

Our Lady’s Hospital School provides continuity of education and promotes the full and harmonious development of hospitalised children. Participants at the workshop, both primary and post-primary pupils, explored the concept of light through a number of hands-on investigations, from exploring a lens to investigating how light interacts with the human body. The ‘Bright Sparks’ workshop is one of the many education discovery workshops developed by the Biomedical Diagnsotics Institute (BDI) at Dublin City University (DCU) and funded by the RDS Science Live Bursary programme.

Since its inception in 1999, the RDS Science Live series (www.rds.ie/sciencelive) has been hugely successful with more than 70,000 school children from across the island of Ireland participating. In recent years the series has provided the opportunity for pupils to get involved in building their own space rockets, developing cures for disease and becoming mini forensic detectives.

Taking science out of the classroom and into everyday life is just one way that the RDS hopes to encourage a lifelong enthusiasm for science amongst students so that they may eventually consider a career in science, technology or engineering. The development of these unique demonstration lectures is only made possible through the generous bursaries awarded annually by the Society.

The RDS, founded in 1731, continues to fulfill its commitment to advancing agriculture, arts, industry and science. The coordination of the annual RDS Science Live series is part of the RDS Foundation’s Science programme which aims to support excellence in scientific endeavour and communication, emphasise the importance of science and technology in economic and social development and encourage young people to see science as provoking, challenging and fun.