Skip to main content

The Curiosity Box

 There's been something of a thing in the UK for boxes that you get sent regularly through the post, whether it's food, flowers or beauty products. But a new Kickstarter appeal is raising money to send out much more interesting boxes - boxes of science fun.

The Curiosity Box, described as 'seriously sciency fun for families' is produced by Renée Watson, founder of the Oxford-based science education startup WATS.ON, and her expert team of science communication specialists. It's described as the first monthly subscription service in the UK for 7-11year olds, bringing science to life through hands-on activities and lots of extras to inspire creative and curious minds.

The team is looking for £4,000 to kickstart their idea and achieve their vision of disrupting education and making science happen in every home across the UK and beyond. 

The Curiosity Box has been specially designed to get the whole family involved and to encourage kids to learn about science by developing their creative thinking and problem solving skills.

Renée says: "I want kids like me who don't fit the scientist mould to realise that STEM is absolutely for them too, I believe that the next Ada Lovelace or Emmett Chappelle is just waiting to be found and we want to find them! I am so excited to be launching The Curiosity Box, our future relies on the next generation of innovators and I want to get cracking igniting as many sparks of interest in STEM as possible!"

Pledges range from £5 to £1,000 with the usual range of goodies for those who contribute. The smallest contribution to receive a box (hopefully in August) is £20.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Beyond Belief - Helen Pearson *****

Apparently it comes as a surprise to many that medicine was not particularly scientific until the end of the twentieth century (to be honest, it's no surprise to me - we had a GP who used homeopathy in the 90s). Instead it was based on anecdotal guidance - the kind of thing that appeared to work. Evidence-based medicine has since improved the field, trying where possible to base decisions on evidence, ideally based on randomised controlled trials. The first part of Helen Pearson's book covers this well - though I think it's by far the least interesting part of what we discover. Instead what's truly fascinating is the rest of it, looking at a wide range of other fields where evidence was rarely properly used and that are only now starting to dip a toe in the water. These include social policy, policing, conservation, business and education. The main part of the book gives us examples of how bad these areas have been in terms of basing decisions on what's always been ...

In Seach of Sea Dragons - Matthew Myerscough ****

It's common advice to would-be authors of narrative non-fiction to open with something dramatic - Matthew Myerscough certainly does this with the story of his being trapped under an avalanche on Snowdon (while his girlfriend, also carried away remains on top of the snow unhurt). It certainly is dramatic, but seemed entirely disconnected from the reason I got the book, which was to read about fossil collecting.  Luckily, though, in the second chapter we get into a more conventional 'how I got interested in fossils as a boy'. Having recently reviewed Patrick Moore's autobiography and noting that astronomy was one of the few sciences where amateurs can still make a contribution, it came to mind that palaeontology is another - Myerscough is a civil engineer by trade, but just as amateur astronomers can find new details in the skies, so amateur fossil hunters have been searching for these relics for centuries. When I give talks in junior schools, the two topics that guarant...

The Infinity Machine - Sebastian Mallaby ****

It's very quickly clear that Sebastian Mallaby is a huge Demis Hassabis fan - writing about the only child prodigy and teen genius ever who was also a nice, rounded personality. After a few chapters, though, things settle down (I'm reminded of Douglas Adams' description of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ) and we get a good, solid trip through the journey that gave us DeepMind, their AlphaGo and AlphaFold programs, the sudden explosion of competition on the AI front and thoughts on artificial general intelligence. Although Mallaby does occasionally still go into fan mode - reading this you would think that AlphaFold had successfully perfectly predicted the structure of every protein, where it is usually not sufficiently accurate for its results to have direct practical application - we get a real feel for the way this relatively unusual company was swiftly and successfully developed away from Silicon Valley. It's readable and gives an important understanding of...