science

Science Week

Science Week is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Science Week rather than just read about it. In short: Science Week (sometimes National Science Week) refers to series of science-related events for the general public which are held in a specific countries during a designated week of the year. The aim of such science weeks is to engage and inspire people of all ages with science, engineering and technology.

Key takeaways

Science Week belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Science Week to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Science Week from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Science Week (sometimes National Science Week) refers to series of science-related events for the general public which are held in a specific countries during a designated week of the year. The aim of such science weeks is to engage and inspire people of all ages with science, engineering and technology.

Australia

Australia's National Science Week is held annually in August, funded through the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science. National Science Week welcomes an audience of over a million and hosts more than 1000 events across the nation. Science Week provides an opportunity for all Australians to participate in events and activities that showcase science and encourages younger people to consider continuing studies in science. Past participants have included polar explorer and environmental scientist Tim Jarvis, NASA Astronaut Katherine Megan McArthur, environmentalist Tanya Ha, theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss, and palaeontologist Scott Sampson. Another key activity during National Science Week is the National Project, which is run in conjunction with ABC Australia. Past projects have included Weather Detective in 2014 and the Aussie Star Hunt in 2009. Also in 2009, Cosmos Magazine launched a website called HELLO FROM EARTH which collected over 28,000 messages which were beamed to the first Earth like planet candidate, Gliese 581d. In 2016, it included Wikibomb2016, a project to create missing Wikipedia pages on Australian women scientists.

India In India, Science Week culminates in National Science Day, which takes place each year on 28 February to commemorate C. V. Raman's discovery of the Raman Effect.

Ireland

Science Week Ireland is an annual week-long event in Ireland each November, celebrating science in our everyday lives. Science Week is currently an initiative of Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), but was previously run organisations including the Royal Dublin Society and Forfás. It is the largest science festival in the country, engaging tens of thousands of members of the general public in workshops, science shows, talks, laboratory demonstrations, science walks and other science-related events. Science Week is a collaboration of events involving industry, colleges, schools, libraries, teachers, researchers and students throughout Ireland. It supports Science Foundation Ireland’s mission to catalyse, inspire and guide the best in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) education and public engagement. The ultimate aim of this effort is that Ireland will have the most engaged and scientifically informed public by 2020 as outlined in Science Foundation Ireland’s strategy Agenda 2020. This also aligns to the national science innovation strategy, Innovation 2020. Science Week 2021 will take place from the 7th – 14 November.

United Kingdom Britain's National Science Week was first held in 1994. It is now known as British Science Week and is one of the largest national celebrations of science. It is organised by the British Science Association and funded by BEIS (UK Department for Business, Energy, Innovation and Skills) and other partners. British Science Week is a massive UK-wide grassroots celebration of science which saw over 1 million people taking part in over 2,300 events and activities throughout the UK in 2017.

United States In the United States, the National Science & Technology Week was one of the National Science Foundation's main outreach efforts between 1985 and 1999, before the program was succeeded by Find Out Why, a year-long outreach effort focused on families, offering everyday science activities. The idea was revisited in 2005 by the U.S. Department of Education and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, in collaboration with other government and scientific partners, with an "Excellence in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education (ESTEME) Week."

Other programmes Other national science weeks include the Norwegian Forskningsdagene ("Research Days"), Canada's National Science & Technology Week, the South African National Science Week, and China's National Science Week launched in May 2006. On an international level, the European Union has held union-wide science weeks between 2000 and 2006.

Catalonia Science Week in Catalonia is a collective programme of activities with over 350 events to disseminate scientific knowledge in the Catalonia autonomous region of Northern Spain. Organised by the Catalan Foundation for Research and Innovation (FCRi), it involves around 150 organisations from universities, research centers, museums, associations, and companies. Its aims are to offer society, especially young people, original and accessible ways of conveying scientific knowledge that will encourage future scientific vocations. At the same time, the programme works to speed up the Catalan research system's efforts to disseminate scientific knowledge. One of the highlights of Science Week in Catalonia is the Science Day in Schools. The first edition of Science Week in Catalonia took place in 1996 in Spain, with yearly followup events funded by different Catalan institutions, companies and associations.

References

External links

Australia's National Science Week The UK's National Science and Engineering Week British Science Association Canada's National Science & Technology Week China's National Science Week European Science Week Indian Science Week and Science Day Forskningsdagene (Norway) Archived 2007-02-21 at the Wayback Machine South Africa's National Science Week The Big Bang - UK Young Scientists & Engineers Fair United States' National Science & Technology Week U.S. Excellence in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education (ESTEME) Week 2005 Science Week Ireland Science Week in Catalonia Archived 2016-04-16 at the Wayback Machine

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Science Week

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Science Week claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Science Week before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Science Week ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Science Week

In research: Science Week appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Science Week in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Science Week is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics August observances, Awareness weeks, February observances, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Science Week outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Science Week in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Science Week means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Science Week out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Science Week in simple terms?

Why does Science Week matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Science Week?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Science Week.