Do you want to work for Parenting Science Gang?

Are you bright, switched on, a fan of science projects that work with the public without patronising them, not repulsed by small children and up for working on a project that pushes the envelope of citizen science and what it can do? Parenting Science Gang is an innovative user-led citizen science project, funded by the …

Apatite for Destruction experiment summary

This is a summary of the experiments we've been doing. We'll get the results of most of them on Saturday (18th Feb) at the results event in Cardiff.  Making hydroxyl apatite (HA) in the lab   The people in Cardiff (Cardiff Catalysis Institute, our partners in this project) have been trying to make HA on pieces …

In praise of online chats

I realised this week that there's something I've been taking for granted, that's been a big part of this project. Online chats. The very wonderful I'm a Scientist kindly made us a 'Nappy Zone' and lend us a chatroom for our chats. They have just got a new chat engine, so we were excited to have our …

Parenting Science Gang to go ahead

I'm delighted to announce that the Wellcome Trust, in their infinite wisdom, have decided to give a Society Award to Nappy Science Gang phase two - provisionally titled Parenting Science Gang. (Proposed slogan: Parenting is always an experiment, so why not collect the data?). A few months ago, I was talking to Dr Caspar Addyman, who …

Apatite for Destruction – the hypotheses so far

Our project is investigating the mineral exoskeleton found on some nappies in our experiments last year. So far it's mainly been looking stuff up on the internet, digging around, and talking through what we can do and what our priorities are. To give you a bit of a flavour, here are the bare bones of the facts …

25 things we learned by running a radical citizen science project about nappies (as you do)

At the end of a project, you usually put weeks or even months of effort into evaluating it and writing an evaluation report. Then about three people read your report. Which is a shame, because if you've been honest, there's stuff in there that might be useful to other people. So I thought I'd write …

Do you want to work for Nappy Science Gang?

Nappy Science Gang is a user-led citizen science project, which has been funded by the Wellcome Trust and the Royal Society for Chemistry. We are about to start a new project, funded by the Royal Society for Chemistry, called Apatite for Destruction. More background here. We need a part-time assistant for the project. Could it …

The exoskeleton in your closet

We are delighted to announce that the Royal Society for Chemistry have awarded us a grant for a new user-led public science project about nappies: Apatite for Destruction. I wanted to call it Nappy Science Sleuths or something, but one of our volunteers suggested Apatite for Destruction, because the thing we are investigating involves a mineral …

The David vs Goliath tale of how a citizen science project overturned decades of NHS advice

There's a lot of contradictory advice in the UK cloth nappy world about washing your nappies. But one thing every source is agreed upon is that YOU MUSTN'T WASH YOUR NAPPIES IN BIO POWDER. Nappy Science Gang is a citizen science project for parents who use reusable nappies, and one of our aims has been …

New funding from the Royal Society for Chemistry

We are absolutely delighted to announce that we have been awarded an outreach grant by the Royal Society for Chemistry. This will fund us employing Dr Laura Hobbs as a science co-ordinator for the project. And us running some 'Nappy Science Gang Live' events, to engage wider audiences in what we are doing.  We are …