Science Exhibit Shows The Best Of New Brunswick Business Innovation
FREDERICTON — Walking into a room at Science East, the first stand on the left is for Measurand. Their module has a video of the manager of research explaining her work and a moveable model of a construction site. The back of the board explains that Measurand is a company that makes sensors that go into places and detect movement. With their display model, visitors use a lever system to displace rocks in one place and see how rocks in other places are affected.
Measurand is one of the eight New Brunswick businesses chosen for the NB Innovation Exhibit. Michael Edwards, chief science officer at Science East worked with exhibit design collaborator Elizabeth Vickers-Drennan to make the exhibit which is primarily made up of a video and hands-on component.
“So one half is taking a scientific concept and explaining that concept,” said Edwards. “And then the other half is how an organization, a company, or individual then applies that and comes up with an innovation.”
It is a family exhibit, meant to be enjoyed by all age groups. Edwards thought that innovation, or the practical application of scientific concepts, was a good theme for an exhibit.
“Sometimes in schools, the way science is taught, people don’t see the connection to the every day,” said Edwards. “So science is something that exists in a classroom but it doesn’t exist outside the classroom.”
When creating the exhibit, they wanted to highlight the fact that there are a lot of companies doing things in New Brunswick that people are unaware of.
“People don’t know, for instance, that C-Therm is the industry leader on how fabrics conduct heat,” said Edwards. “And so if someone like Nike or Under Armour is looking at picking out a material to make a piece of sports clothing they use technology from New Brunswick.”
When choosing companies for the exhibit they also tried to highlight smaller and new companies. One was Canum Nanomaterials, a company built by UNB students who came up with a new mechanism to synthesize a chemical that was more cost-effective than what has been done in the past.
They also made room for some older New Brunswick businesses like Ganong, one of the first companies to manufacture chocolate bars.
“That was innovative but that was innovative back in 1920,” said Edwards.
After selecting companies they continued working with them to create the exhibit. On every exhibit is a video that has a recording of someone from the company explaining how the science behind their product works.
“We wanted to get a human face on things,” said Edwards. “Because very often when you hear about innovation you hear about a product but you don’t see the people.”
Like a lot of exhibits in Science East, they also wanted every module to have a hands-on element. Measurand created its own hands-on element for display. For companies like Kognitiv Spark, which makes augmented realities, they created an instructive screen the visitor holds to complete a task.
Funding for the exhibition came from the New Brunswick Innovation Foundation and the Museum Assistance Program grant. Science East’s long-term goal is to take the exhibit on tour to schools and museums in New Brunswick.
“It is very much a celebration of what happens here in New Brunswick,” said Edwards.
For now, the NB Innovation Exhibit will be at Science East all summer.
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Rachel Smith is a summer intern for Huddle. Send her story suggestions: [email protected].