Manitoba Schools Science Symposium

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 2, 2011 B1 – http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/experiments-are-their-passion-121073479.html

Science fair winners: (back row, from left) Siyuan (Sam) Cheng, Cody Shaw and Abhishek Chakraborty and (front row, from left) Daisy Liu, Ella Thomson and Amanda Wong. DAVID LIPNOWSKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS

Canada has a glorious future ahead in research and development — even if understanding the top entries at the Manitoba Schools’ Science Symposium this weekend may be beyond most of us.

There were 334 entries from 460 students at the province’s largest science fair.

The winning topics were diverse and mystifying to the uninitiated: Effects of Folic Acids on Blood Cells; Evaluation of Snow Fungus Polysaccharides on Benzo[a]pyrene-induced DNA Damage; Genetic Modification of Clostirdium thermocellum for Improved Biofuels Production.

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http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/columnists/greetings-fellow-scientists-120946349.html

Note to readers: As you read this, I am standing in front of about 500 grades 4 to 12 students delivering a stirring speech on the joys of science. Unless, of course, you are reading this around 8 p.m., in which case I’m lying on the couch in my den watching the NHL playoffs and eating salsa directly from the jar. But my main point is that, for reasons not entirely clear to me, I was invited to speak at the opening ceremonies of the 40th annual Manitoba Schools Science Symposium, the largest science fair in the province. Here’s my inspiring address:

Greetings, scientists of the future: It is my scientific hypothesis that some of you are wondering who I am and why I am standing in front of you today.

That is an excellent question. The truth is, I don’t have a clue.

Since you are the cream of our future scientific crop, maybe one of you could conduct a ground-breaking experiment, then explain to the rest of us what I’m doing here.

Better yet — even though no one has invented a workable personal jet-pack — I’m sure that in the near future, one of you will be sitting in your secret laboratory, fiddling with a supercomputer the size of a stick of gum, when — EUREKA! — you’ll unlock the secret of time travel.

So, please, genius of the future, hop in your time travel machine, which I assume will look like a DeLorean sports car, and travel back to this exact moment and give me a hand with the rest of this speech, which so far seems pretty lame. And since you’ve mastered the space-time continuum, maybe you could pop back to 1972 and slip me the answers to my Grade 11 chemistry exam.

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