Team:TU Delft-Leiden/Human Practices

Human practices

Zomerfestival and Hortusdag

On the 24th of May 2014, our iGEM team participated in the annual Zomerfestival, organized by the TU Delft. The Zomerfestival hosts various music, culture, food and technology events for the people of Delft. Our goal was to interest people in the fascinating subject of synthetic biology. For our stand, located in the botanical garden of the TU Delft, we arranged a number of different microscopes: a common light microscope, a do-it-yourself microscope we made for about ten euros, small microscopes that could be clipped on a smartphone, and a microscope made of lego. The accessibility of these microscopes attracted lots of children, some of whom got really fascinated by the different samples we showed them. Meanwhile, our team members had interesting discussions with their parents and other interested visitors about iGEM and synthetic biology in general.

The day after the Zomerfestival, the Botanical Garden organized the Hortusdag, a day on which the garden was open for general public and hosted different stands concerning the subjects of gardening, biology and environment. Our iGEM team hosted a small stand with the microscopes we also used for the Zomerfestival. Our stand mainly attracted children, to whom our team member Janna gave a spontaneous course in sample preparation. The kids were thought to make their own sample from onion and could look at it with the lego microscope afterwards and take their sample home. They really enjoyed it and where fascinated by the fact that they could explore a world unknown to them with their own experiment.