This document provides resources for citizen science, including a guide to citizen science, ethical guidance from Durham University, and links to publications about citizen-led research and connectivity. It also lists Fibonacci numbers showing the pattern of each number being the sum of the two preceding numbers.
26. Publications & Resources
• Guide to Citizen Science:
http://www.ukeof.org.uk/documents/guide-to-citizen-science.pdf
• Centre for Social Justice, Durham Ethical Guidance:
http://www.dur.ac.uk/beacon/socialjustice/ethics_consultation/
• Making is Connecting: the social meaning of connectivity, from
DIY and knitting to YouTube and Web 2.0. Polity Press 2011
http://www.makingisconnecting.org
• Beyond research in the wild: citizen-led research as a model for
innovation in the digital economy:
http://www.de2012.org/sites/default/files/digitalfutures2012papers/P
apers/Session1BTalesofEngagement/Whittle_etal_BeyondRitW.pdf
Talk about crowdsourcing in terms of collaboration, problem solving for social benefit and get insights from you to shape a musical citizen experiment
I am a Wellcome Trust Engagement fellow – there are four of us – the others are Dr Kevin Fong, Dr Richard Barnett and Professor Roger Kneebonewho have the opportunity over two years to develop our practice to become pioneers of public engagement with biomedical research
Introduce a project called Catalyst based at Lancaster University – which, like UCL extreme citizen science group – is led by the interests and needs of citizens to solve community problems for wider social benefit. How might the practice of science have a social value?
Turing’s Sunflowers – this was a citizen science experiment to explore mathematical patterns in sunflowersin Turing’s centenary year – something Turing was looking at just before he died.
Led by MOSI and several other partners
Let’s look at the maths -
That’s how we get the fibonacci sequence
And this appears in many plants, including daisies, pine cones and sunflowers
Looking at the spirals, this
Here’s a short clip about the project ….
So people grew sunflowers
Lots of schools and growing groups got involved
Staff grew them at MOSI
And – the public did they own thing riffing off the concept –and making it their own - this is a giant baby that marched through Manchester Day parade last year, made by artists Spearfish – one of their artists came to MOSI to plant a sunflower whilst working on the concept of making a giant baby computer – the computer that Turing worked on…
At Manchester pride- 80,000 people – the theme was Geek Science – Turing’s Sunflowers influenced several floats & sunflowers were handed out –
Eastland homes who manage social housing in some of the most deprived parts of Manchester got involved by putting on a residents fun day to decorate their Turing’s Sunflowers float for Pride – if they’d got that number sequence wrong – we’d have known they didn’t understand the maths! People did their own thing – we just encouraged them…
And of course the scientific end result was the largestfibonacci dataset replicating past experiments and throwing up some new questions
Largest dataset
We discovered that you can still get spirals without fibonacci numbers or disordered spirals. The pictures provide a new perspective compared to other experiments to look at this in more detail.
We couldn’t have achieved this without all our partners
If you want to find out more about fibonacci numbers in nature – do check out the Edinburgh Science Festival Patterns in Nature Exhibition – it features two sunflower photos taken by growers (who happened to be professional photographers)
If you’re thinking about developing your own citizen science project, this guide, is a great place to start…
A few other resources
And now to a new citizen science experiment that requires your input…. Think of your favourite song – imagine the place where you start to nod your head and sing along… that’s the hook – everyone knows it when they hear it… but scientists aren’t sure why
Crowdsource playlist from the audience….
We were wondering whether kids would get the concept – my niece and nephew assured me that they can….