In addition to lectures (I attended Prof. Lovejoy’s talk, Why the warming can’t be natural: Harnessing butterflies for climate closure, and it was amazing), workshops and tours, there were fascinating exhibits at the Islamic Studies Library on the History of Science in Islam, and at the Osler Library on Sanitizing style: Germ theory and fashion at the turn of the century.

We also launched Arduino and Raspberry Pi lending at Schulich Library, that was pretty exciting!

Visits to the hives at Macdonald campus and on the roof of the Schulich Library! And that was in addition to workshops, a hands on session with the Oculus Rift, and a Wikipedia edit-a-thon on women in science. There was a Science of Star Trek exhibit at Schulich Library, and Knowing Blood, Medical Observations, Fluid Meanings, at Osler Library.

This year also marked our first lecture by Dr. Joe Schwarcz, a Science Literacy Week regular, on Eating Right: The Facts and the Myths.

Sadly, our movie nights were not that popular (lessons were learned!) but the same cannot be said for exhibits and events around the theme of From Lab to Life. Who wouldn’t want to knit a petri dish with Let’s Talk Science @ McGill or “drop in and bust myths” at Redpath Museum? We got really techie with augmented reality and Raspberry Pi workshops, and a learn to code session with HackMcGill.

There were 4 different library exhibits, and the Music Library joined in with Phonomenal! Rare sides from the history of sound recording. You can still read more about it from their post at the time.

We got our walking shoes on for a tour of climate sensors on campus with Prof. Sengupta, plus guided tours of the Lyman Entomological Museum, the Steinberg Centre for Simulation and Interactive Learning, and the newly redesigned Maude Abbott Medical Museum.

There was a Doctor Who exhibition, Traveling through space and time, at Schulich Library, and The World That You Know Through the Eyes of Muslim Geographers, at Islamic Studies Library. Some really important Treasures from the History of Science in Rare Books and Special Collections were also on display.

The timing was perfect, coinciding with a Public Astronight talk, ORIGINS: How the Earth Shaped Human History, and the Cutting Edge Lecture in Science: Can we halt global amphibian declines?

There was an exhibit in the Redpath Library building on the theme of the week, Oceans, offering different cartographic views of the oceans of the world.

We learned all about the Data Rescue: Archives and Weather (DRAW) project, and The Art of Explaining Science to Non-Specialists with Dr. Diane Dechief. We also had De-Stress + Sketch Online, SLW edition, with the folks from Visual Arts Collection, and a book club meeting for the book, Data feminism, by Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren F Klein.

Many of the 2020 offerings were back with the addition of some new workshops, like Chart Making in Excel: Going Further by Telling a Story with your Data. AstroMcGill also hosted an online event, Talking with Martians: A panel on red-planet research, and the Redpath Museum brought us an informative online Secret science spots of McGill.

The theme for the week was Mathematics and Prof. Rhonda Amsel did not disappoint with Stats-wise, a presentation on the ‘why’ of statistics. Dr Joe Schwarcz educated us on Analyzing Risk, and we had library workshops on Data Analysis in Excel, Charting numbers for understanding and communication, LaTeX, and Python.

I offered a workshop on spinning wool into yarn with spindles printed on library 3D printers, and it was a blast!

The theme in 2023 was Energy and we really brought it! There was fun with crochet, LaTeX, satellite and drone images, and repairing personal devices. We also learned what every Montrealer should know about earthquakes from Dr. Christie Rowe.

You can still visit the exhibits page to try out the Rare & Special Collections images digital jigsaw puzzles and colouring pages.

With Science Literacy Week on hold in 2024, we decided to have our own version in March of this year. Among other great activities, the Macdonald Campus Library launched their Seed Library that week and we had a fascinating tour of the Rutherford Museum and McPherson Collection with Curator, Prof. Barrette. This might sound wild, but we also learned about ancient Egyptian animal mummies from Prof. Reznikov!