OUTREACH OVERVIEW

Centre outreach provides the mutual opportunity to spark curiosity, and to challenge, question and learn from others

Ensuring scientific knowledge and advances are shared widely with the community and METS sector is a core tenant of our work.

ƒ The Centre’s PhD & ECRs gain professional development opportunities during the planning, preparation, roll-out and interactions through these activities and events. They also advocate for student and community participation in STEM topics, subjects and careers

ƒ Through our outreach, the community and industry gain insights into the Centre’s groundbreaking research and invention. They also experience how science and engineering is being practically applied for the benefit of future generations

Science Kits for Schools (‘Minerals Kitchen’)

COEMinerals’ ’School Outreach Team’ - comprising seven PhDs and two ECRs representing multiple Centre-nodes and supervised by A/Prof Elham Doroodchi (UON) – is creating ‘Science Kits’ for schools as part of a multi-year activity that began in mid-2021.

Science Kits contain teaching resources associated with innovation and eco-efficiency in minerals processing that support science and technology learning.

During 2022, the Centre’s School Outreach team finalised the equipment and teaching tool sets, which will equip teachers with engaging content for classroom or home-based learning that make science fun.

Each kit contains science experiments, outlined in step-by-step guides (recipes) for experimentation as well as links to interactive demonstrations of the simple scientific experiments. The handson activities help demonstrate the importance and challenges involved in improving minerals processing.

The focus of experiments thus far is mainly on ‘flotation’, which provides students a broader understanding on the fundamentals of flotation and explores surface chemistry, the importance of gas bubbles and how changing particle surfaces properties can make them float or sink. Flotation is fundamental to many COEMinerals’ energy saving/ waste reducing techniques and inventions. This context provides a practical application of float/ sink scientific principles (that are taught during primary school), and which can increase efficiency, and reduce energy and waste, during minerals processing.

The Outreach team is looking to incorporate more experiments that showcase scientific methods such as, microscopy, which enables better quality images of tiny or microscopic observations during experiments and showing its application in Centre research. It is also developing ways to demonstrate how the main processing units in mining work, including agglomeration of fine particles, flocculation for water treatment and recycling.

The Project is affectionately known as ‘The Minerals Kitchen’ because the experiments utilise ingredients and items that can be purchased at low cost or found in many homes, including materials like coffee and chickpeas. As such, they are safe, practical and cost effective.

The Centre is at ‘Phase 2’ of kit development, with experiments being tested during live demonstrations by PhDs and ECRs during in-person events, school visits and node-lab visits. Testing also included demonstrating the experiments to Centre members and ARC representatives during the annual COEMinerals Conference. Feedback is essential to developing the kits.

The kits will soon be made available to Australian schools, including classrooms in regional and low socio-economic communities. Videos that demonstrate the scientific experiments (as explained in the kits) will be accessible via the COEMinerals website and via social media sharing in 2023.

Science and Engineering Challenge

Supporting a national STEM outreach programThe ‘Science and Engineering Challenge’ (SEC) - COEMinerals commenced development of an activity for SEC inclusion for Years 6-10 school students.

Through the SEC, students experience aspects of science and engineering which they would not usually see in their school environment.

The COEMinerals ‘Rock Star Challenge’ team, led by Prof Mohsen Yahyaei (UQ) conceptualised two Science and Engineering activities in 2022. Both ‘games’ challenge students to engage with and learn more about the science behind modern minerals processing, helping to encourage further studies and careers in related fields.

One activity focuses on the physical separation of solid particles based on their size, which is fastmoving to prototype stage.

The objective of the challenge is for students to achieve good separation of the mixture by using sieves of a known mesh size and determine the size distribution of the sample mixture. This activity aims to mimic the sieving process used in the minerals, food, chemical and pharmaceutical industries.

The second activity focuses on filtration of water using an array of materials (e.g., gravel, sand, active carbon, cotton) arranged in a filtered column.

Activity outcomes are assessed based on time efficiency, column height and quality of filtrated water (e.g., pH, alkalinity).

A third activity is anticipated to be added in 2023 relating to lab testing protocols.

Diversity of Thought

The initial design and concept of the ‘Diversity of Thought’ module for 1st year undergraduate students in collaboration with School of Engineering and School of Architecture and Built Environment (SABE) at UON began towards the end of 2022.

The aim of the module is for 1 st year undergraduate students to gain concept and understanding, that when they include diverse groups (and not just a homogeneous group) into their stages of innovation and implementation processes, then they have a greater chance of creating or expanding original ideas and improving problem solving. Eight-minute video modules will be created over the coming years, which branch into topics with Diversity of Thought at its centre, such as equity and gender, indigenous & cultural representation in engineering, artificial intelligence etc. The aim is to have at minimum the first module created and piloted to Engineering and SABE school by later end of 2023.

The ‘Diversity of Thought’ module is an COEMinerals GEDI outreach initiative lead by COO Annemarie Fawkner.

Additional Centre Outreach

COEMinerals sponsored the following sector events:

ƒ International Association of Colloid and Interface Scientists (IACIS) Conference (July, Brisbane)

ƒ International Mineral Processing Congress (IMPC) Asia Pacific Conference (August, Melbourne)

ƒ Early Career Women in STEMM Paper and Grant Writing Workshop (Sept, Sydney)

COEMinerals members participated as speakers in numerous other events throughout 2022, and UniSA node members A/Prof Marta Krasowska and Dr Amir Beheshti organised the 33rd Australian Colloid and Surface Science Student Conference.

Members at each node participated in various COEMinerals and STEM-related school and community outreach activities including:

ƒ Wilderness high school students visited UoA node to experience bio-engineering work in the new lab, as part of the students’ STEM student work experience

ƒ UQ members engaged visiting Aspley High School students in minerals processing lab experiments, and presented context for their work (i.e,. providing an overview of how metals go from being in the ground to becoming end products)

ƒ Members from Deakin node participated in the ‘Girls in Physics’ school outreach and hosted a ‘Girls in STEM’ work experience day. Deakin also provided tours and presentations to Geelong Manufacturing Council’s ‘Geelong Future Leaders of Industry’ and ‘Girls Leading Advanced Manufacturing’ (GFLOI & GLAM) programs for Y10-12 students

ƒ AusIMM and other IWD-related event participation in multiple cities, including a speaking/panellist role by Dr Mahshid Firouzi (UON)

ƒ University Open Day participation at multiple nodes