Science Rendezvous at UOIT: An annual community success

Hundreds of young scientists and their parents took in a full day of free, hands-on activities on May 11 as the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT) hosted Science Rendezvous for the sixth year.

The highly successful day of discovery and learning offered by UOIT researchers, graduate and undergraduate students (from a variety of faculties), and various community groups featured all kinds of activities both old and new. For the first time ever at Science Rendezvous, UOIT opened the doors to the Automotive Centre of Excellence (ACE), for guests to get a rare glimpse of the first testing and research centre of its kind in Canada (and in many respects, the world), including its powerful climatic wind tunnel (temperature was 36 degrees Celsius).

Many Science Rendezvous visitors participated in the new tower building competition. The tallest tower built was 50 cm high, remarkably made with only one sheet of paper. Others created their own liquid nitrogen ice cream, launched bottle rockets and explored the amazing diversity of animals from all over the world through a game of biodiversity bingo.

“It was a pleasure to see so many guests come to Science Rendezvous this year and participate in our activities, as well as learn about science” said Annette Tavares, Lecturer, UOIT Faculty of Science and organizer of Science Rendezvous at UOIT. “We hope to see the same amount of engagement and enthusiasm from our guests next year.”

Science Rendezvous concluded with the popular annual Science Jeopardy game with contestants using clickers in a format inspired by the famous television game show.