• Question: why should i vote for you and what are you gonna do with the prize money???

    Asked by shifty10 to Pete, Meeks, Steve, Tom, Stephen on 15 Jun 2010 in Categories: . This question was also asked by jacob399, lydiamoore14.
    • Photo: Steve Roser

      Steve Roser answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      You should most definitely vote for me, or else the cute kitten on my lap gets it….
      I’m going to spend the money sponsoring some science lectures for schoolkids and the general public.

    • Photo: Tom Hartley

      Tom Hartley answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      I think you should vote for the person who gives the most interesting, clear answers, and who has the best idea for the prize money – bear in mind we have to spend it on communication and engagement – that means activities like I’m A Scientist which help other people understand what we’re doing and why. My idea is a “Scan Your Teacher” day, and here’s how I described it on my profile page.

      “This would be an opportunity for a school science club or class (maybe even your class) to spend the day at the University of York, learning about neuroimaging and planning an experiment. It would culminate in a chance to scan the teacher as she or he does the task they’ve designed. In order to make this happen we’d have to get ethical approval, which is needed for all experiments involving human participants to ensure no-one is harmed or upset. Normally this is only given once the experiment is finalized so it might not be possible to design and run the experiment on the same day, but maybe some of the planning could be done in advance. And of course, we couldn’t force the teacher to be scanned, so I would volunteer to be a substitute if they were unwilling or unable to be scanned. In any event, we’d analyze the data, and send pictures back to the school. I am not sure how far £500 would go, but perhaps we could afford to video the day, interviewing the students (they will probably be able to explain things in a more down to earth way than us) and then put the result on YouTube. I this would be a great way to help young people from around the world learn about fMRI.”

      If you don’t understand what I mean about scanning or fMRI, again please look at the profile page (and click on the “see more” links). I also have a blog here, which you can read if you want to find out more.

    • Photo: Marieke Navin

      Marieke Navin answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      Hi shifty10! You should vote for me because…you want to! Hopefully from these questions you’ll think I’m an OK gal and want to keep me in the competition! With the prize money I’m going to make a cosmic ray jacket, which is a new type of cosmic ray detector that I have invented. You will basically wear it and it will flash lights down the sleeves when BAM! you’ve been hit by a cosmic ray.

    • Photo: Stephen Curry

      Stephen Curry answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      Hey Shifty10 – Vote for me if you think I give decent answers to the questions here.

      With the money I am hoping to make another video to try to show people the real nuts and bolts of science and scientists. My main aim would be to do interviews with real scientists to ask them (as some of you guys have) why they got involved in science and what they do. Some people tend to be a bit intimidated by scientists but I would hope to show that many of them are ordinary men and women who just happen to be a bit more curious than average!

    • Photo: Pete Edwards

      Pete Edwards answered on 15 Jun 2010:

      You should vote for the person who gives the best answers.
      I would spend the money on developing a new website to tell the world about the science we do. I’m not too sure how much money you would need to spend on a website but I would want it to be posh with loads of stuff to download and lots of video clips made by a professional company – I don’t want it to look naff!
      All this costs but I had any money left over I’d spend it on a decent curry.

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