Scientist For a Day: Geologist

This event has sold out. Discover more Dinosaur Festival programs.

Ages: 9-12 years

The Scientist for a Day program is a full day social and educational workshop for young minds aged 9-12 years, designed to show kids what it’s like to work in different areas of science.

These spring school holidays, kids will learn everything there is to know about rocks and minerals and their properties in hands-on experiments. As part of their interactive investigation, your child/children will also get to explore the new Minerals gallery and go behind-the-scenes to see where the real science happens in our collections lab, with Collection Manager, Mineralogy & Petrology, Ross Pogson and Technical Officer Dayna McGeeney.

Ross Pogson has been with the Australian Museum since 1979, currently as a Scientific Officer, Collection Manager for Mineralogy & Petrology and Group Manager, Geosciences & Archaeology.

He runs the Museum’s X-ray Diffraction (XRD) analytical facility. Ross’ principle duties involve the management of a rock, mineral, meteorite and tektite collection of over 80,000 items, and associated public program, loan and educational activities.

From a very early age, Dayna picked up rocks and marvelled in their shapes and colours. Collecting minerals and rocks continued and gave rise to questions as to how they were formed and why they were found at this point on the planet. This strong interest of knowledge lead to studying geology, remote sensing, geochemistry and gemmology. Her studies and previous research has taken her to PNG and country NSW investigating gold geochemistry and aquitard geology respectively. Both involving a large range of investigative techniques and laboratory instrumentation.

Today, Dayna uses this knowledge and understanding to assist in curating the Australian Museum's 80,000+ specimen collection of minerals, rocks, gemstones, meteorites and tektites.