Regent House visited W5 this week as part of the Royal Society Local Heroes talks and events, an exciting celebration of 350 years of the Royal Society’s scientific achievement and endeavour taking place at the award-winning science and discovery centre in Belfast. The programme celebrates local scientific heroes, the pioneers, mavericks and geniuses who, for centuries, have changed the way we live and see the world. The events celebrate the contributions made to science and engineering by distinguished local fellows of the world’s oldest science academy.
Caption : Paul Ferguson and Rachael Cheevers from Regent House joined pupils from across Northern Ireland at a special schools talk by BBC broadcaster Professor Iain Stewart at W5 in Belfast exploring how volcanoes work as part of a series of Royal Society schools talks celebrating 350 years of the Royal Society’s excellence in science.
Pupils from
Regent House
and nine other schools attended a special talk at W5 by eminent geologist and BBC broadcaster Professor Iain Stewart covering the hot topic of volcanoes.
During the last few centuries, a few volcanoes have blasted their imprints onto human history. The June 1991 eruption of Mt.Pinatubo in the Philippines injected large amounts of ash and sulphur dioxide gas into the atmosphere, causing global temperatures to fall an estimated mean of 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit over two years. When the Indonesian volcano Krakatoa erupted in 1883, the explosion and resulting tsunamis killed 36,000 people. The eruption dropped global temperatures about one degree Fahrenheit and caused striking multi-coloured sunsets around the world. One blood-red sunset is said to have inspired Norwegian painter Edvard Munch to create 'The Scream.'
Throughout human history, volcanoes have been a fatal attraction to society and to geologists like Professor Stewart who study them. In a tour of some of the Earth’s most volatile volcanoes, the pupils were shown how volcanoes can be valuable windows giving an insight into how the world works.
This RS talk was supported by Geological Survey of Northern Ireland and for full details of the Royal Society Local Heroes talks and events at W5 visit
www.w5online.co.uk
or phone 028 9046 7700
ENDS
For further information please contact:
Stephanie Berkeley, Marketing Manager, W5,
Tel: 028 9046 7788
Email: stephanieberkeley@w5online.co.uk
Notes to Editors:
·
To celebrate 350 years of the Royal Society’s excellence in Science, W5 is running a series of school and public engagement events in the honour of some of Northern Ireland’s remarkable Fellows of the Royal Society.
·
The Professor Iain Stewart talk was supported by the Geological Survey of Northern Ireland
·
Past and present Fellows of the Royal Society from Northern Ireland come from a broad range of areas of expertise. Our selection of speakers will link past science with science being carried out today, showing the continuity of developments in science, highlighting key issues that face scientists in the present and the future. Further details of events can be found on our website at
www.w5online.co.uk
·
Professor Iain Stewart is a geologist and broadcaster who holds a chair in Geoscience Communication in the School of Geography, Earth & Environmental Science at the University of Plymouth. He serves on various national and international committees and co-leads an international research network on earthquake archaeology. His broad interests on the societal impacts of geological hazards and abrupt environmental change have led to several BBC science series, most notably
Future Earth
,
Earth; The Power of The Planet
and
Journeys from the Centre of the Earth
. His latest television series is on BBC2 at 9.00 on Tuesday nights and tells the story of how the earth influenced human history.