Interview with Christopher Jameson - the Director

BM. OK we'll move on a little bit now to a section about how Techniquest goes about communicating or performing science because clearly that's at the heart of what you do. There are certain kinds of terms and ideas that we've come across but I think the most basic thing to start off with really is to get your understanding of what science is.

CJ That's a more basic question than I am generally asked. OK, I suppose my basic idea of what science is, is that's a way of thinking but, I mean. An interesting question is, I wonder how many people that you speak to who've been to Techniquest actually think that they have quotes learned some science? They've come here and been exposed to a science-based environment in which they have taken their own route. And I mean this is the, the key thing about this, this kind of learning and that is that it is - it's customer directed and it is the learner who takes their own route, every individual has their unique package of opportunities because they decide, what they do. And - what we allow them to do here as I think I said earlier is to explore phenomena, because they can see that a hot air balloon goes up. Principles, they can actually pump things and lever things and, and so forth. Issues, because they can go into the hub and engage with contemporary things or - not so contemporary things which raise, raise interesting questions.

Science is about - I mean you can say simply that science is a way of working but it wouldn't apply to this because we don't actually teach people to be experimental and deductive. What we give people an opportunity to do is to work their way around a variety of things, a variety of areas, on which science touches. We don't offer science as a package, we couldn't measure the amount of science in somebody on the way in and measure them again on the way out and find there was more, more there. It's - and I mean bear in mind that we are in the affective domain. I mean, we're, we're actually there affecting attitudes and giving people that feeling "Oh it, science isn't that bad after all I can do that." Rather than saying "I now know Newton's laws" or something when they, when they've finished. They may know Newton's laws because they may have been to a theatre show or done something in the lab which has explored that but their fundamental thing is, is not.