Science: Unlocking Potential

Dr Caroline Oprandi keeping you up to date with science & technology at PACA

We started off our astronomy topic with an astronaut visiting the school, Ken Bowersox, who had been to the International Space Station (ISS) five times and was commander of the mission to fix the Hubble Space Telescope. We then ended the topic by watching Tim Peakes launch into space and successfully arrive at the International Space Station, the first Briton to visit the ISS.
Since NASA’s shuttle programme ceased four years ago, all ISS crew spend several months training at Star city in Moscow, where Russian cosmonauts have trained for over 50 years, and are launched in a Soyuz (Russian space shuttle). One of our students asked the astronaut Ken if he spoke Russian and Ken kindly replied with a few words in Russian. Tim Peakes said that learning Russian was the hardest part of training to become an astronaut. When Ken was at our school he gave a very powerful message to the pupils about “earth” being home and that world peace is possible.
However, moving back down to earth… we have been very busy in our STEM afterschool club making jewellery for the charity Crossover. Crossover’s mission is to relieve the poverty, hardship and distress among the homeless, the street community and the poor within and around the City of Brighton and Hove. Crossover have a charity shop at 82 Preston Road and PACA’s STEM club have donated their hand made jewellery to the shop. Thank you for the extra help from Miss Norris, Miss I’Anson, Mr Rotherman (3D printing guru!) and Mr Flynn.
  
Social Enterprise is a very important topic for me and I extensively researched this area when I was a postdoc researcher working at the Science and Technology Policy Research Unit (SPRU) at the University of Sussex. Engaging with this type of activity helps the pupils to understand that rating the success of a business based purely on your bottom line of profit is not the full picture. We have to also implement the measure where we assess the triple bottom line. This is where you take into account not only net profit, but also measures of your company’s impact on both the environment and society.
As humans we are programmed to have compassion and to “crossover” to help those in need. The current model of “survival of the fittest” and the “race to the top” doesn’t actually work that well for a global society that is getting far better connected. The model of “reciprocal altruism” is a much better fit.
Portslade Aldridge Community Academy (PACA) is a college offering sixth form, 11-16 years, youth centre, adult learning, community education, sports centre and pre-school. Find out more at www.paca.uk.com