2013.03.01
OIST offering tours, demonstrations, seminars Sunday
It’s a day for kids of all ages – youngsters to senior citizen youth at heart – as Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology opens its campus for a special science day.
The Open Campus Sunday begins at 10 a.m., and runs to 5 p.m. (last entry for activities at 4:30 p.m.), with
dozens of opportunities to experience first-hand eh world of science. OIST officials encourage visitors to come and “have fun while you deepen your understanding of science through activities like science talks, science demonstrations and lab tours.”
A pair of morning science talks are on tap. “The Space Challenge” with Professor Sakamoto Seiichi, Public Relations Director of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, starts at 10:30 a.m. in the Auditorium. At 11:30 a.m. in the Seminar Room, “Ocean Current Power Generation: The Future Starts in Okinawa”, begins with Professor Tsumoru Shintake of the OIST Quantum Weave Microscopy Unit.
A 12:30 p.m. session in the Seminar Room is “The Ways of the Ant” by professor Evan Economo of the OIST Biodiversity and Biocomplexity Unit. “Thinking about Earth from Space” by Professor Sakamoto Seiichi is in the Auditorium at 1:30 p.m., and Professor Robert Sinclair of the OIST Mathematical Biology Unit talks on “What Are We?” at 3 p.m. in the Seminar Room.
For those interested in Demonstrations and Experiments, there are 17 scheduled for the Open
Campus Science Day. (1) Let’s Look Into the Brain, (2) Wonders of Ants, (3) Hand-made Microscope and Telescope, (4) Giant Soap Film, (5) Robot Demonstrations, (6) G0 Unit Research Lab, (7) Fluorescence Imaging of Small Organisms, (8) Microscope Demonstration, (9) Zebra Fish Tank, (10) High Performance Computing Room, (11) Listen and Repeat: The Mechanism of Memorization, (12) Liquid Nitrogen Experiment, (13) Computational Neuroscience Unit Research Presentation, (14) Brain Mechanisms for Behavior Unit Research Presentation, (15) Let’s Have Fun with Physics, (16) In Order to Conduct Research and Experiments Safely, and (17) What Does Scientist Do?
There will also be a Science Project for Ryukyu Girls, Lab tours where guests can visit areas not normally open to the public, to see the tools OIST researchers use, such as large electron microscopes, the supercomputer room, the zebra fish facility, and the robot room. There will also be special areas marked off for explanations of what a scientist does.