British Science Week is entering its third decade in 2025, taking place on 7–16 March, and the theme to mark the start of this new era is ‘Change and adapt’!
Supported by UK Research and Innovation, British Science Week is a ten day celebration the whole community can take part in and enjoy. For children, this is a wonderful opportunity to engage them in science-themed events, demonstrating how science links with other school subjects and has fascinating real-world applications.
Change and adaptation is all around us. Changing and adapting plays a big part in science; you can find examples in every area of STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths). Cities, towns and other areas where people live change and adapt as the world’s population grows, plants and animals change and adapt to their surroundings to survive. Technology has changed exponentially and adapted to our new, busier lives (or have we changed as technology has developed?). For example, phone technology has changed rotary home telephones to smartphones.
Our behaviours change too – we need to change how we consume the world’s resources to offset the worst effects of the climate crisis, and adapt our lifestyles to reduce our impact through recycling or reducing waste.
But change and adaptation doesn’t just happen here on Earth, even the stars and other celestial bodies change as they gain and lose mass. Perhaps there is life on other planets that adapts as their environment changes.
When exploring this theme, we can also consider how attitudes to STEM and the people who do it have changed and adapted. Perceptions of scientists are changing and we need to keep adapting our thinking until we can no longer picture a ‘stereotypical scientist’ – anyone can be a scientist.
Change and adaptation is often a good thing, but not always! A topic we have all become more familiar with in the last four years, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, is viruses and how they adapt to better infect and multiply within their living hosts. This can be scary, but understanding this behaviour allows scientists to develop the most effective vaccines and other treatments.
