Question: Why did you choose to develop a badge for the guiding unit?Zoe and Phoebe :)

Emma Trantham answered on 2 Jul 2012:

Good question Zoe and Phoebe

Well first of all I guess I got involved because I like doing ‘public engagement’ – basically this means going out into the general public and getting them interested in science. I particularly enjoy working with students (in part because you ask such great questions!) so I was looking for some student groups I could work with.

Actually my original idea wasn’t to create a badge. My friend runs a Brownie and Guide group and I wanted to take in some bacteria type activities for them to do and wanted to link it in to one of the badges they already do. But what I found out was that there weren’t any bacteria mentioned in any of their badges!

I thought this was really bad because bacteria are everywhere and are really important! (For example, did you know that there are 10x as many bacterial cells on and in you right now as there are human cells in your body? Without the bacteria you would not be very healthy because they help us with lots of processes).

This led to me deciding to design my own badge which I am currently testing in 1 Brownie and 1 Guide unit (so far we have made cuddly bacteria, gone pond-dipping for algae, gone mushroom and lichen hunting and next week we are designing menus where every course has to have something that we have made with a microbe (bacteria, virus, fungi, algae, protozoa)).

I want to test it in more units to see if it works when the leader is not a scientist and then hopefully we can roll it out to more children. i’d also like to trial it in cubs/scouts so that boys can have a go at the activities to.

Does that answer your question ok? Is there anything else you would like to know?