SDS 3.11 – The Scientist

This is Professor Why and we went to the Science Fest at Suntec! The science centre usually has these workshop/roadshows yearly at various malls or exhibition halls in Singapore. So if you’re not off to Jurong to check the Science Centre, the SCIENCE CENTRE COMES TO YOU.

They brought in an inflatable planetarium and quite a lot of polytechnics were there to show their science stuff! I got to learn about viruses and even won a pen from them.

Ah science. You can be so delicious. This is a collaboration of Republic Poly students and some gelato store to create mango and choco gelato. It was rather tasty to eat too.

There were robots and games you could play there. If you took one of the info pamphlets, you could go around the whole exhibition to solve the questions and get a stamp for each section. When you finish the whole thing and collected all the stamps, you can go to the redemption booth and redeem a wristband!

The good thing about the weekend was that there were less students coming in groups with their school. Each of the booths were recreated to be like a real place of whatever we were supposed to learn. The section about food allergies looked like a supermarket and we were to go shopping there according to the list we chose. Ours was nuts and gluten allergy since we pretty much knew what to pick for lactose intolerant people anyway in one of the sheets.

Oh yes, there were talks and also a show on the main stage for kids! The talks were held in another closed up section since they were given by Professors, Doctors and science types.

We were also there because Avariel (one of our crew) was there working at the pinhole photography booth! On the right, from top to bottom is Jo’s, Raven’s and then mine! Mine was like Raven’s but portrait instead of landscape.

What was done was that photo paper was placed in the black tin there were there’s a hole covered by a black strip. We placed the tin on a ledge and opened the strip for a minute and a half. Light goes through, thus the paper is exposed to the image in front of it. In reality, the image that is burned into the paper is upside down but you can always turn your paper the right way up.

We then got to develop the paper in the dark room there! Oh for those wondering why are the pictures inverted compared to typical black and white photos, if you remember how film looks like or what they’re called: negatives. So when negatives are exposed, they are in inverted colours. Said negatives are then inserted into an enlarger which is somewhat like a projector and then the image shines at the photo paper!

Since we didn’t have film, that step is skipped and thus you have a white and black picture as opposed to a black and white picture if you see what I mean!

Anyway we had fun there and even got a free badge after doing a feedback form. As you can see from the video, we like to play with the things there.

More photos up at Avariel’s: Day 1, Day 2 & 3, Day 4 and Day 5 (with a fun game called Fracto Mahjong).

The next day I went to TURE. It’s in between Kallang and Bugis but dropping off at Lavendar MRT station is the closest even if the address is said to be 66 Kampong Bugis. You can’t really miss which building it is. It’s the one with a lady painted on with a Salvador Dali moustache, not unlike us the other time.

The open house meant that there were free activities to try out and performances. Plus, it was the grand opening of Ukulele Movement‘s new shop!

Some of the staff of Ukulele Movement performed near the entrance in front of the cafe too.

If you don’t know what it’s called TURE. It stands for nature, adventure and culture. That’s what it says anyway. It was a hot day and Food for Thought was there selling snacks and there were drinks, cotton candy and pretty much lots of stalls selling t-shirts or booths to sign up for kayaking and such.

My mission was to get to the new UM store and wow, ther were lots of people! They were having a sale too so items were discounted. What I finally got was the GLEE scoreboard for ukulele so yay! The place is pretty nice for ukulele lessons if you wanted to learn them too instead of going to the branch at Bugis.

So that’s it. Lots of… ture.