School DVD
competitions
The Royal Society has run nationwide DVD science
competitions since 2004, sponsored by Freemasons New Zealand, which
have seen more than 500 students take up the challenge of communicating
science on the big screen, with exceptional and entertaining results.
Many of these DVDs can be seen on
www.hotscience.co.nz.
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The
theme for the 2008 competition is Charles Darwin and the theory of
evolution. Major prizes include a
two-week trip to the UK and a mystery voyage to a remote location in
New
Zealand.
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The
winning team for the 2007 DVD Competition - from Otago Girls
High
- have just completed their expedition to the UK and remote
eastern Greenland. More information on their trip will be available
soon.
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Entries in this competition covered
topics as diverse as adolescent sleep patterns and water spiders. The
six winning teams went on film-making field trips with some of the
country's top scientists, to volcanoes, fiords, and remote islands. The
team with the winning video from these trips, as judged by Sir Edmond
Hilary himself, was taken on a trip to Scott Base in Antarctica.
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The Royal Society of New
Zealand, along with
other organisations, hosted a number of events celebrating the three
major insights into the workings of the Universe published by Albert
Einstein 100 years ago in 1905. Students made videos about all kinds of
physics topics, from special relativity to a demonstration of the law's
of physics with a dead possum. The two winning teams went on trips to
the UK and Europe, visiting places such as the Royal Society of London
and the Vatican Observatory.
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On 8 June
2004, a rare astronomical event marked a
historically significant moment for New Zealand. The 1769 Transit was
the reason Captain Cook made his first expedition into the Southern
Ocean. It was this scientific quest to determine the
distance to
the Sun, as well as the search for the Great Unknown
Southern
Continent, which motivated that epic voyage and led to the mapping and
colonisation of New Zealand. The students created videos around the
topic of the Transit, from dark matter to the hardships of Pacific
voyaging. The two winning teams went on all expenses paid trips to the
UK, including excursions such as meeting Stephen Hawking and a fossil
hunting trip.
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