The Big Bang Fair 2018 Roundup

13th to 17th of March 2018

The MetaboLight team went to Birmingham and took on The Big Bang Fair; the largest celebration of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) for young people in the UK. An event with foot traffic of between 8,000 and 10,000 people each day. We were very pleased with the opportunity and we can confirm now that this event was a major, but enjoyable, challenge for the whole team.

Our interactive exhibit helped a lot in bringing in the crowds and our three main activities of (1) Guessing the gummy bear colours; (2) Making your hand invisible with near-infrared light; and (3) Measuring your brain activity; were a success. In fact, we made more than 300 hands invisible, measured the brain power of more than 300 brains and gave away more than a couple of thousand gummy bears.

One of our main activities this time was the hand scanner, a device that people place their hands in and using near-infrared light we demonstrate to them how their hand becomes invisible. This device was put together by our resident medical engineer Nico Chen using various LEDs (light sources), a very sensitive camera that can see near-infrared light and a Raspberry Pi (a small computer). It was literally a “hands on” activity illustrating how different colours of light pass through tissue and how near-infrared light can penetrate through bone. We use near-infrared light in our research to look into the brains of very sick newborns in the intensive care unit and quantify their levels of brain oxygenation and metabolism; information that medical doctors can use to treat the infants.

We would like to thank everyone that came to see us in The Big Bang Fair and importantly the people that did our activities and asked a lot of questions!