Gus: the Scitech bus


Gecko: the Scitech bus

Grasping a flask pouring with smoke, Holly and Isabella look like they’re playing with fire.

Only it isn’t smoke… and what Holly and Isabella are doing is perfectly harmless. Wearing protective gloves and eyeglasses they are experimenting with a conical flask of liquid nitrogen, which, because it’s so cold, when it comes in contact with the air gives off nothing more harmless than thick foggy clouds of vapour.

Holly, who is eight, and even Isabella, who’s only five, know about liquid nitrogen because they are regular visitors to the Big Red Bus.

The bus, painted a vivid scarlet and emblazoned with the words ‘Science Road Show’, travels all over Western Australia bringing hands-on exhibits and exciting science demonstrations to thousands of children - along with many of their fascinated parents - in schools and neighbourhood centres in cities, towns and isolated communities throughout the state.

Another bus, this one in green livery and entitled ‘Kids’ Science State’, is the Maths Factory and brings marvellous maths activities, many of them quite physical, to the same communities.

“We call the red bus ‘Gus’ and the green one ‘Gecko’,” laughs Amy Willott, who drives Gecko thousands of kilometres every year. “Everything we do is about having fun while the kids are learning and these buses are much loved throughout Western Australia. That’s because what we do is not just about science: it’s also about the great relationship children and adults can have with it.”

David Broadbent, a Science Communicator with Scitech agrees. “Children learn best through osmosis,” he says. “When they experiment, working out how best to use pulleys and weights or how to make slime, they are developing a personal connection with science. Kids make natural scientists because they are always asking ‘why?’”

“On one trip to the Kimberley we experimented with water rockets: 600 millilitre plastic bottles containing a little water and fired into the air using bicycle pumps. The kids had to work out how much water to put in the bottles and how much pressure to use to make their ‘rockets’ go the highest. It was a great research project, and some of those kids have such brilliant hand-eye coordination they were catching the water rockets on the way down.”

“Now don’t tell me that’s not a fun way to learn.”