On 24th and 25th March 2022, Anthias Consulting’s Director and Senior Consultant Dr Diane Turner (Dr Di) presented The Open University’s outreach meteorite collection to Year 7 students at Swavesey Village College in Cambridgeshire.
Diane visited 9 classes over 2 days, talking to a total of 270 students as part of the year group’s science project about space, as part of British Science Week.
Diane talked to the students about comets, asteroids, meteors, meteoroids and meteorites and how these are named. The students learned about the different types of meteorites and how they were formed.
The students had the opportunity to handle the specimens from the second largest collection of meteorites in the UK including rocks from the moon, from Mars, a tektite – rock from Earth which has been flung into space and come back down, a carbonaceous chondrite containing particles older than our solar system and an 8kg part of the large iron Gibeon meteorite.
Following the visit, Diane said: “I’m delighted to be able to return to outreach activities and to be able to go into local schools once again to share the OU meteorite collection. It’s wonderful for the students (and staff) to have the opportunity to handle the rocks. This provides an invaluable experience which they can really relate to what they have been learning about and further inspiration for their projects.”
Diane is a visiting Academic & Consultant at The Open University where she continues her disease diagnosis research from her PhD along with food, drug and space applications.
