I was interviewed for a research news magazine last month. The story was in Norwegian, with the title Normal Folks' Turn. It is the cover article of Forskerforum Magazine for February 2023, pp 16-23. It was such a surprise to see myself on the cover! The article is well-written by Kjerstin Gjengedal, and well-illustrated by Paul S. Amundsen. The reason for the story is that you don't have to be at a university to do research. Normal people can and do want to study their world! For instance, Ketil Moland Olsen from Media City Bergen, or me, from Marineholmen Makerspace... Scott Bremer, researcher with the Center for the Theory of Knowledge at the University in Bergen, is also featured in the article.
Backing up, before the pandemic, we held several workshops here in Bergen led by enthusiastic citizen scientists from Amersfoort, the Netherlands. Harmen Ziip and Diana Wildschut of the Cooperative University of Amersfoort were so prepared, so knowledgeable, about setting up a net of citizen weather stations around their town, and our town, that we couldn't help ourselves. Before you knew it, we were filling up conference rooms with eager folks holding soldering irons. Most of us were new to soldering. The initiative is called Meet je Stad, or Measure Your City. They started in 2015 in the Netherlands, getting people to study the weather in that flat land. They discovered our Makerspace with eager people surrounded by our 'Seven Mountains'. Now there's even a weather station in the Sudan to measure soil moisture. Is the dragon tree going to make it, or die out?
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| My weather station's report from last summer |
Here we are, post-pandemic, with many weather stations not reporting in any more. Wouldn't it be fun to have an event where we taught people how to repair theirs? The Amersfoort team have soil moisture sensors built into the weather stations now. We could have an event where we build upgraded stations.
Shall we?
Have fun, learn, and make a difference!
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