The Big Wild Read’s (www.bigwildread.co.uk) topic this year is the environment. Bethnal Green’s library hosts the Tower Hamlets 3 monitoring site so ERG were delighted to accept an invitation from The Idea Store www.ideastore.co.uk to talk about air quality as part of its summer programme.

ERG air quality analyst Andrew Grieve admitted it was something a bit different to his usual day number crunching in our operations centre.

"It was a scary prospect. It was going to be tricky to pitch a talk at an age range that covered 5-13. We were originally asked to show the kids around the monitoring station, but I wanted to provide some context first; so they could understand that there are different analysers inside because there are different pollutants in the air."

Andrew had to get creative to express the concepts of atoms and molecules in the air to the young ones.

"I decided it might be easier for the kids, especially the younger ones, to understand atoms and molecules if they could play at being atoms. I made placards with the names of elements on them like oxygen and carbon and asked each kid what type of atom they wanted to be. We made pollution molecules by joining hands together; CO, NO2 and even a hydrocarbon that stretched right across the room. It was a lot of fun."

Jon Alexander showed the kids round the monitoring station and fielded some tricky questions from the youngsters.

"I was showing a couple of kids the particulate monitoring equipment when one kid asked me what happens when the particles get inside the analyser. It was great because it showed an understanding of what was happening, which was really the aim of the day."

The kids also had fun solving a puzzle which involved working out which inlet was connected to which analyser. Try it for yourself (the quickest kid did it in under 60 seconds)…

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Item date 22/08/2007