COLOUR GROUP TEACHING FELLOWS

The Colour Group Teaching Fellows

 
The objectives of the Colour Group are to encourage the study of colour in all its aspects and to promote the education of the public in the field of colour. To this end, the Colour Group last year established a Teaching Fellowship for an outstanding individual to prepare and deliver an inspiring lecture on the subject of colour up to fifteen times per year to secondary schools throughout the UK. It was intended that the lecture should have a highly visual content with numerous demonstrations, along the lines of the Royal Institution Christmas lectures, and should be linked to the National Curriculum objectives in Science and Art.

 Ten applications for the position were received by the deadline on 30th May 2008. Five were short-listed and interviewed on 3rd July. Two were selected as finalists and each presented a 15-minute talk to an A-level class at the London City Academy on 9th July. Questionnaire responses were collected from the 20 students (half art and half chemistry), and analysis showed that both candidates were regarded as outstanding. After consultation with the Committee, it was decided to 'job share' the Teaching Fellowship by appointing both:  Prof. Ron Douglas will operate in south-east England and Dr Ben Craven will operate in southern Scotland. Each Fellow will deliver 10 lectures during the academic year 2008-09, and their contracts will be reviewed in summer for a possible extension to a second year. It should be noted that they are not employees of the Colour Group, but more like consultants, providing a service for educational outreach.

 The two Teaching Fellows were introduced to members of the Colour Group on 3^rd December 2008,  when they presented their  respective lectures at the meeting at City University.

Ron Douglas received his Ph.D. on 'Visual adaptation and spectral sensitivity in rainbow trout' from the University of Stirling in 1980.  

After post-doctoral research in Ulm and Sussex, he joined City University as a Lecturer in 1984 and has been there ever since, rising to be appointed as Professor of Visual Science in 1999. His teaching repertoire includes undergraduate courses in Human Biology, Neural and Visual Biology, Visual Neuroscience, Visual Perception, and Neuro-ophthalmology. Current research projects include the circadian control of teleost retinomotor movements, pupillary movements and iris structure in teleosts, amphibia and cephalopods, and the effects of ambient pressure on visual pigments. He has over 50 research articles in refereed journals and is the co-author of four books on photobiology. Since 2005 he has been a member of the Editorial Board of Visual Neuroscience, and Visiting Scholar at the Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge. He has given frequent interviews for BBC Radio 4, the Discovery Channel and Nature Online.

Ron has taken part in many research cruises to study the biology of deep-ocean animals, including Tenerife and the West coast of Africa (1990), the North Atlantic (1992), the Bahamas (1994) with dives aboard the Johnson Sealink II deep-ocean submersible, the East coast of the USA (1998), the Pacific north of the Hawaiian islands (1999), the Pacific off Costa Rica and Guatamala (2003), the Pacific off Southern California for the Scripps Institute of Oceanography (2005), and the Pacific between Samoa and New Zealand (2007).

 Ron’s lecture to schools as Colour Group Teaching Fellow begins by posing the question “Can my goldfish see colour?”  He shows how the sun’s white light can be split into different wavelengths and introduces related topics such as fluorescence and bioluminescence. He goes through the animal kingdom looking at the types of colour vision of various animals, and outlines the basis of trichromacy in humans, followed by a demonstration of tetrachromacy in birds and fish. Goldfish are tetrachromatic, thus answering the question posed at the beginning of the lecture. He discusses UV vision in insects, fish and birds and the advantages of seeing different colours, demonstrated graphically by showing hidden mouse urine trails under UV light.

Ben Craven received his Ph.D. in vision science from Cambridge University in 1988 and had post-doctoral experience at both Keele and Stirling. He is a science communicator, with a broad base of scientific knowledge that includes physical sciences, psychology, vision science and engineering. He has considerable experience of creating and delivering demonstration-based science shows to a wide range of audiences, including schools.

 Between 1999 and 2004 Ben was successively Exhibit Developer, Staff Scientist, and Senior Science Adviser at the Glasgow Science Centre. His work included development and delivery of science shows for the public and for schools, and the development of demonstration equipment for those shows. His freelance work has included: public science workshops and shows, exhibition text writing, hands-on science exhibit development, web site content development, student teaching, writing of teaching materials, and vision research. Uniquely he conceives, designs and builds much of the demonstration equipment for these shows.  He has delivered talks, events and workshops for: The Royal Institution, Glasgow Science Centre, Museum of Flight, Manchester Museum of Science and Industry, Manchester Science Festival, Wrexham Science Festival (funded by the Institute of Physics), and Glasgow Science Festival (funded by the Royal Institution). All of these shows and talks have been strongly demonstration-based. For examples, see  http://bencraven.org.uk

 Ben says that the phenomena of vision and colour were what sparked his original interest, and so he has made the phenomena of colour a major feature of his talk. Overall, his approach to science communication is to try to stir people's imagination by showing them wonderful and improbable things. His lecture as Colour Group Teaching Fellow is thus highly visual and employs many demonstrations. The aim of the talk, entitled “Why do we live in a colourful world?” is to engender interest and curiosity rather than to insert facts into brains, and it therefore touches lightly on a number of topics rather than dealing with a few in depth. It includes colour in the human and non-human world, Newton’s experiments with prisms, flame colours, colour mixing with pigments and lights, trichromacy, effects of simultaneous contrast and adaptation, lighting, diffraction, thin-film interference, and in the final demonstration: How to turn black into white by turning a light off!