Turning campus into little observatory

July 16, 2018

The Project “Community EXPLORE – from Science to Action”, a three-year initiative hosted by the Division of Environment and Sustainability at HKUST since 2015 with the support of the Hong Kong Bank Foundation, concluded with a School Sharing Symposium held on July 4 at the Hong Kong Science Museum. Over these three years, a series of hands-on activities were organized within the Project for secondary school students to study air quality and generate ideas to improve the air quality in the community.

This year, over 20 secondary schools participated in the project. Under the guidance provided by the faculty members of HKUST and the secondary school teachers, the participating students made their own air pollution monitoring devices and identified scientifically the sources of pollution. Then, they collected data from the communities and analyzed the phenomena that happened in their surroundings.

In the Sharing Symposium, 13 schools shared their project findings and ideas on improving the air quality in their community. One of the participating teams found that due to heavy traffic, Mongkok was suffering from the most serious air pollution, when compared to Sham Shui Po and Kowloon Tong. Another participating team set up three monitoring devices at school and in the community separately. The data collected showed that although the school suffered from a higher level of air pollution when compared to the average level in the Western district, the high-rise campus building imposed a curtain effect and hence protected the campus from 25 to 30 per cent of outdoor air pollutants.

The host of the Project, Prof. Arthur P. S. Lau from the Division of Environment and Sustainability, concluded the learning experience of the students by saying that it extended “From unknown to known”, “From skin-deep to in-depth” and “From confusion to conclusion”. He said he was delighted to witness the students’ development, and encouraged them to keep learning and promoting the spirit of STEM education. Although the curtain has fallen on this Community EXPLORE Project, Prof. Lau believes that the students will continue to raise the social awareness on environmental protection.