Tower and Town, December 2020 (view the full edition)The STEM GroupOne of more than sixty u3a interest groups here in the Kennet area is the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Group. You can find out more about all the interest groups on our website: www.u3ainkennet.org.uk The STEM group was formed about 5 years ago - although the “M” has only just been added. It has 30 members from a wide variety of backgrounds and one or two with no STEM background. Members, and occasionally guests, give monthly talks of about 40 minutes on a wide variety of subjects broadly covered by the STEM definition. The skill is to explain sometimes quite involved ideas to non-scientists. The meetings last for about 90 minutes as there is usually a lively discussion with questions and answers following a talk. Recent talks have included the St Petersburg Flood Barrier; Climate and CO2, and the Tactical Capabilities of the Apache Attack Helicopter. The slides from each meeting are usually converted to a YouTube video which members can access to remind themselves of the talk. The Group also has outings - usually once a year. In recent years, visits have been to the Joint European Torus (JET) Fusion centre at Culham, BMW Mini car construction plant at Oxford and the ISIS Neutron and Muon Source at Harwell. Covid-19 has meant a slight alteration to our approach as we are too large a group to meet together. The presentations, all with commentary, are now published on YouTube as unlisted videos, which means only members have access to them. They can now watch each new presentation when they want and revisit as many times as they like. We have also started an online “Discussion Forum”, where members can make comments on presentations, raise questions on any subject or even bring up an entirely new topic of interest. The Forum is open to all u3a members. Details of how to apply can be found under the STEM Group entry on the main u3a in Kennet website. Nick Stedman is Leader of the STEM Group at u3a in Kennet  Nick Stedman |