Today started off with our visits to Research & Scientific Establishments in London! Following yet another hearty breakfast, I joined the group heading off to the Kew Royal Botanic Gardens. While I don’t particularly consider myself a plant guy, I really enjoyed the whole experience! With about 30 of us, we took the tube to Kew where we could then enter the Jodell Research Center. We were allowed only about a half an hour to actually look around the gardens and greenhouses (much too short to see even a small part of the grounds!). At least the weather was nice enough to stop raining for the duration of our visit! There was one massive green house that was sectioned into various climates that held an extraordinary variety of plant-life!
We then entered the laboratory itself for a lecture on the role of the botanical gardens in providing the baseline research into all things plant. Turned out to be far more interesting than I was expecting. Apparently they have a seed back containing over 2 billion seeds! Just in case.
We scarfed down our packed lunch on our way home, and got ready for the afternoon lecture. This time it was on the energy trilemma and how to approach the energy problem. The speaker, Prof Maroto-Valer, seemed very much in favour of investing in CO2 sequestering (ie. pump excess CO2 deep into the ground) rather than focusing on developing renewable energy sources more quickly. While I’m not entirely convinced that this would be the best solution going forward, it was an very enlightening lecture to say the least!
Finally, this evening was the Science Forum Bazaar! This was the opportunity for us to present a project if we had wanted to. I pulled out my freshly printed poster on fish cell biology and joined over a hundred other students at this event! I was utterly amazed at some of the incredible projects that were on display, and everyone was really excited about what they were doing which made the whole evening rather enjoyable!
Overall, a successful day! Onward to tomorrow.
You and your poster look good!