Electronic Telegraph - UK News] ISSUE 1419 Wednesday 14 April 1999 A sports car for Miss would put fizz into physics By Roger Highfield, Science Editor [External Links] PHYSICS teachers should be provided with sports cars and persuaded to adopt a more glamorous lifestyle to [>]New encourage more girls to take up careers in science and Scientist engineering, a conference was told yesterday. Women scientists were also told that they should dress like [>]Association the Spice Girls with high platform trainers rather than for Women wear expensive sober suits. in Science Averil Macdonald, 41, an educational consultant and [>]Women in part-time physics lecturer who drives a BMW 320i and a Science Porsche 911, said the image of science had to be made internet more fashionable. She told the Institute of Physics resources annual congress that science, particularly physics, to be seen as a worthwhile, rewarding, high-prestige [>]Women, career. Science and Cognition - Giving all physics teachers an expensive car and other McGill trappings of success would show that society values University science, not just to girls but also boys, she told the Salford conference. "If we agree we need more scientists [Image] because they contribute to the nation's wealth, then we have to persuade people to do science. At the moment, we are patently not doing that. "And if we are not encouraging girls into science, we are wasting half the talent of the population," she said. Even if it was accepted that there were sex differences in the brain, "girls have a lot to contribute to furthering scientific knowledge". They were put off because of a "terrible problem with the stereotypical image of the scientist". In cartoons, scientists appeared as mad professors while mainstream scientists were seen as anonymous individuals on the "periphery of normality" rather than inspirational figures. "A flashy car shows that you can be a scientist without being totally boring," agreed Prof Liz Tanner, an engineer at Queen Mary and Westfield College, London, who drives a bright red TVR sports car. Britain's highest profile female scientist, Prof Susan Greenfield, director of the Royal Institution, London, said science needed a sexier image though she placed more emphasis on style."It is not so much that you have to look very rich," said the neuroscientist. "Indeed if you look like Richard Branson, his dubious taste in knitwear might be something you wouldn't want," she said, stressing it was "important to get the right image". "Young people, especially girls, are very sensitive to how trendy something looks," said Prof Greenfield. Rather than having wealthy teachers, it would be more important to have "more physics teachers looking like [ ]the Spice Girls". They would not have to wear an expensive suit but "platform trainers or whatever the Spice Girls wear," said Prof Greenfield, who shares a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow with her husband but "hates driving". The congress was told by Ms Macdonald that single-sex science classes for all pupils over the age of 11 would encourage girls. It was a "well-researched fact" that girls from single-sex schools did better at science than those in mixed schools, whereas boys did better when both boys and girls were present. It was often argued that mixed classes were better because the girls had a "civilising" influence on the boys. In other words, said Ms Macdonald, who taught at Kenilworth, a mixed comprehensive in Warwickshire, the educational system was prepared to sacrifice girls' potential achievements to let the boys do their best. Teaching styles might add to the problem. While boys were generally willing to take risks and see getting an answer wrong sometimes as part of the price they paid to "win" at other times, girls shied away from being tripped up. To encourage more girls into science and engineering, teaching styles should be more co-operative. She said that girls got better results with continuous assessment and questioned why more marks were given for exam performance. * Experiments that will collide beams of gold nuclei together to try to create the kind of nuclear matter that made up the universe in its first ten-millionths of a second of existence are to start next month. "We're hoping to heat up matter to such a high temperature and pressure that it's like being in the heart of a supernova or neutron star - but rather more experimentally accessible," Prof John Nelson, of Birmingham University, told the congress. 10 December 1998: [Connected] Girls + science = improbable 30 May 1998 [Features] Boys vs girls 9 April 1998: [Connected] Why the Curie myth is repulsive to women 14 February 1998: [Features] Don't patronise our female Fellows 31 January 1998: [Features] 1,180 fellows - and just 39 women