Two students from Somerset have won this year’s award with a pioneering investigation into birds’ perception of colour – the results could have important practical applications
Do birds have a favourite colour? It’s probably not a question you have ever thought about, but a project cleverly designed to find an answer led to two schoolboys – George Rabin, 14, and Ed Thurlow, 15 – winning GSK UK Young Scientist of the Year award at the Big Bang Fair, an annual event that celebrates science and technology.
Scientists and engineers play a vital part in a modern, knowledge-based economy, and science, technology, engineering and mathematical (Stem) subjects are increasingly attractive to young people. Between 2004-05 and 2014-2015, the number of students taking Stem subjects at university increased by 26%, but even more are needed: in the UK, employers are struggling to find Stem specialists, and one estimate suggests that by 2020, the UK could be short of 1.3 million scientists.
So it’s important to find ways of encouraging more young people to take up Stem subjects. GSK takes a multi-pronged approach that includes sending its own scientists into the classroom, and hosting interactive science shows that support the national curriculum through real-world demonstrations. The healthcare company also recruits 90 apprentices each year and offers work placements at its research labs to students.
This year, for the first time, GSK also sponsored the UK Young Scientist award, which was open to school students between the ages of 11 and 18 and attracted hundreds of entrants of a very high calibre.
Nikki Yates is GSK’s UK managing director and also leads the UK Women’s Business Council Stem action group. “It’s always a delight to hear about the new and exciting ways that young people approach problems,” she says. “This year’s competition highlighted some amazing talent, which is exactly why it’s so important that we continue to engage children in science subjects, and inspire in them the confidence and ambition to be our future innovators and leaders.”
George and Ed, who won this year’s award after presenting their ideas to a panel of high-profile judges – including Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock, space scientist and TV presenter, Jason Bradbury, TV presenter and gadget guru and Dr Shini Somara, mehcanical engineer and TV presenter – both attend Churchill Academy in Somerset. Their project was a model of empirical science, carefully designed to test a hypothesis and rule out confounding variables.
The boys’ decision to investigate whether birds had a preference for a particular colour was initially motivated purely by scientific curiosity. “We were both very interested in nature and ornithology, and the power of colours in things like the placebo effect, so it seemed like a perfect combination. And it was also a citizen science project that didn’t require fancy equipment,” says George.
The boys set up bird feeders in their back gardens. Each garden had five feeders, coloured blue, green, red, yellow and clear. They made sure to change the orientation of the feeders regularly, in case that skewed the results, and then set up a camera for an hour each morning, afternoon and evening across all four seasons to record the bird visits to each feeder. They amassed data covering a total period of 400 hours, from which they were able to count the number of visits.
When the experiment finished, they had 3,205 pieces of data. Of those, just over a third visited the blue feeder. It was a conclusive win for blue, with green the second favourite. “Birds,” explains Ed, “have better vision than humans: while humans have three colour receptor cones, birds have a fourth, enabling them to detect colour on the ultraviolet spectrum.” The pair speculate that blue is attractive to birds because of its familiarity, while red and yellow are often indications of poisonous substances in nature.
It was only after their results were in that the boys thought about possible applications for their findings, such as using the less popular colours red and yellow to deter bird strikes on aeroplanes and wind turbines. As Ed says: “There seems to be quite a strong correlation between the colour of planes and the number of bird strikes.”
Do you want to take part in the competition? The Big Bang Near Me programme is led by EngineeringUK and is taking place across the UK now.
