The Big Bang Fair and a bang of a more dangerous type.

So Friday morning on a crowded train down to London through the’ All Seeing Eye’ that is twitter I found out about the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan. The few links and pictures that would load on train just showed the amount of ‘real time’ damage. As the days have gone on we have learnt and seen more, even now as we watch the nuclear power stations, we are reminded of how powerful our planet is.

This video and pictures really affected me:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/03/13/world/asia/satellite-photos-japan-before-and-after-tsunami.html?hp?src=ISMR_AP_LO_MST_FB (NYTimes)
http://vimeo.com/20989521 (Jean Labelle)

Images of radiated people having to talk to loved one through glass, it’s like a very bad film. We are all thinking of everyone in Japan.


The reason I was on the crowded train to London, was a very exciting, slightly spur of the moment decision. The 10th, 11th and 12th of March were massive days in the STEM calendar, London’s Excel centre were the hosts of The Big Bang Fair- Launched in 2009, The Big Bang: UK Young Scientists & Engineers Fair is the UK’s biggest single celebration of science and engineering for young people and aims to celebrate and inspire them.

www.thebigbangfair.co.uk

And what an inspiring event it is, like I said it was a last minute decision, having seen the tweets and realising it would be the first time since 2006 (when I myself was Young Engineer for Britain) that I hadn’t attended either the Big Bang Fair or the Young Engineer Awards (as they were formerly) Thursday I bought a train ticket and Friday morning headed down to London. I adore the train journey from Sheffield to London St Pancras, the scenery, the speed, but most of all it’s the stations. I tweeted with @JonatECS about my love for stations and Sheffield (not just because I’m local) and St Pancras are two of my favourites, I could spend hours in St Pancras and the food you can get there is lovely. If you’re passing through you must try Peyton and Byrne Bakery....mmmmm delicious.

Anyway I’m getting sidetracked, so I arrived in London and after topping up my Oyster Card I headed out to the Excel Centre, it’s not a short journey tubes, then the DLR out to the docklands, it was a lovely varied journey.

So just over three hours after I left Sheffield I arrived at the Big Bang Fair and after getting my pass and dumping my coat I headed along to the Young Engineers drinks reception. It was lovely to talk to sponsors, trustees, past winners and of course teachers and students. I always find talking to passionate students and teachers so inspiring, this time it was no different! Some of their projects were so exciting and the best part was that it enthused them too, I know the significance events like this make and it was so nice to be a part of it!

Then having met up with Shawn Brown (UK Young Engineer 2010) and Chris Jefferies (UK Young Scientist 2009) we headed down to watch ‘the bang goes the theory’ live tour. These were the sort of things that made science and engineering fun for me as a child; it was full of bags, flames and Jem’s fantastic inventions. All finished off with ‘the symphony of bang’ it really is quite catchy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VblqcRvN7-Y

Afterwards we went backstage to say hi to Liz, Dallas and Jem to congratulate them of such a good live show. I must admit I’m very jealous they have such fantastic jobs. We spent most of the afternoon with one of more members of the team as they met fans, filmed bits and discussed the Japanese earthquake. The team had done an earthquake and tsunami episode and were currently sorting out how to add the information about Japan. This special episode was shown yesterday (Monday) so the team had two days to film new bits. They did a really good job and even used some of our ideas. You can watch it here-

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00lwxj1

by this time we had been joined by Peter Hadfield (UK Technologist 2009) Tom Hearing (UK Scientist 2010- specialises in Geology) along with Peter Girlfriend we made an interesting group who spend most of the afternoon quizzing Jem about his past and present work. It was really inspiring, and we almost missed the start of the award ceremony.

The Award show was started off with a BANG by the Braniac guys abusing science and the Kate Bellingham and Professor Brian Cox did a fantastic job of presenting all the many awards. All the projects were fantastic and with entrants from all across the UK (even Sheffield) we were surrounded by the best of the best. Read more about Connor Plant our Sheffield entry on MoreFrom’s blog

http://morefrom.blogspot.com/2011/03/young-sheffield-engineers-career-set-to.html

The main two awards are UK Engineer 2011 and UK scientist 2011 and this year Andrew Cowen was out UK Engineer and for the first time a girl, Hannah Eastman, was our UK Scientist! Well Done and love a bit of Girl-Power! See the moment that they won.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftQ5AURq5Rg

Pictures from the Big Bang Fair are up on there facebook page http://www.facebook.com/TheBigBang4U

Have a look, it really is such an inspiring event, I found this video on you tube and loved it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2Kxecx42r4&feature=youtube_gdata

So I left London that evening to travel back to Sheffield having been enthused, inspired, informed and revitalised and what’s more... I managed it all in heels :)

Where have i been?

I have been so busy with talks, a meal at James Caans and a trip to Downing Street to name a few (selection of pictures to follow).

A Celebration of Womens Contribution to BritainMr Brown welcomes all the Ladies
Sarah Brown talks Duffy
I have also been talking a lot as well as judging at the Big Bang Fair (very fun and exciting) where I made new friends and caught up with old. I was very privileged to sit on a fantastic panel of judges, catching up with some old friends (Kate Bellingham) and made new friends (Jim Al Khalili and Liz Bonnin). Incidentally Kate and Liz are on the Museum of Life programme on the BBC- it is FANTASTIC, so well shot and Liz and Kate are as fantastic as ever. Kate BellinghamLiz Bonnin
Jim Al Khalili
I also got to meet the rest of the ‘Bang Goes the Theory’ crew, very talented people. The Big Bang was hold in Manchester and was a fantastic 3days and they let me talk at the sponsors dinner, a real privilege.
The Bang Goes the Theory Team
Young Engineers will always have a special place in my heart, without them StairSteady would not have taken off as it did and for that I will be forever grateful.

So as well as these amazing opportunities I have been working harder than ever, we have been spending a lot of time trying to get the StairSteady to be the perfect product. We have a possible new powder coaters ‘Apple Aluminium’ a local company in Sheffield, they have been fantastic and I had a meeting with Adam who runs it and its seems like it will be a fantastic working relationship (there turnaround time seems to be unbelievable) but only time will tell.

We have been looking into new packaging, TNT seem to like to play Basketball with our StairSteadys and so we have been trying a lot of new packaging and it seems promising.
I will try and blog more, next week we are at Naidex, so I will try and get some picture, video and possibly blog (depending on time). However, please follow my tweets @RuthAmos

More to come sooner.....
Keep Moving.......
Ruth x