Are you in the gift-giving mood? We have the best gift ideas for the citizen scientist in your life.
KITS AND TOOLS
SciStarter El Nino Kit: This all-in-one kit is everything you need to get started in NASA’s SMAP project with SciStarter. The kit can be a great gift for an outdoorsy family who is ready to get involved in science.
Buy: Purchase through the SciStarter Store
Borrow: Select kits are available to borrow at Arizona libraries. (Interested in starting your own lending library? Email us: smap@SciStarter.com)
PocketLab:
Imagine having an accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, barometer, and thermometer in your pocket. That’s what you get with PocketLab! Start making and experimenting with this all-in-one kit.
Buy: Purchase through the SciStarter Store
AirCasting
AirCasting is an open-source, end-to-end solution for collecting, displaying, and sharing health and environmental data using your smartphone. The platform consists of wearable sensors that detect changes in your environment and physiology, including a palm-sized air quality monitor called the AirBeam, the AirCasting Android app, the AirCasting website, and optional wearable LED accessories.
Buy:Purchase through the SciStarter Store
Rain Gauge For CoCoRaHS
Give the gift that keeps on giving with a CoCoRaHS approved rain gauge. Help your friends and family track the precipitation in their neighborhood by kickstarting their CoCoRaHS experience.
Buy: Purchase through WeatherYourWay.
DIY Secchi Disk
We all love handmade gifts. Give your friends and family their very own way to measure phytoplankton with a Secchi Disk. Perfect for getting started with the Secchi Dip-in.
Build: Make your own with ~$10 of materials.
Binoculars
A classic yet critical piece of equipment for any citizen scientist. Binoculars can be used to track birds for the Christmas Bird Count and the Great Backyard Bird Count in February.
Buy: Find binoculars at your local outdoors and recreation shops.
Airvisual Node
You breath in and out almost 25,000 times a day. It’s important to know what’s in that air. Track your air quality and contribute to global air quality maps with an AirVisual Node.
Buy: Purchase through AirVisual
Trail Camera
Get ready to observe and record what lives in your backyard with a trail camera. There are several projects looking for data and you can find them through eMammal. (Check with individual projects for the brand of trail camera required.)
Buy: Find a project and get your equipment.
Magnifying Glass
Not sure what project is best for your budding citizen scientist? Give the gift of discovery with a backyard magnifying glass. Let your children explore and learn.
Buy: Look for magnifying glasses at your local toy, gift, and book stores.
BOOKS AND GEAR
Citizen Science: How Ordinary People Are Changing the Face of Discovery
AVAILABLE DEC 20
By: Caren Cooper
Think you need a degree in science to contribute to important scientific discoveries? Think again. All around the world, in fields ranging from astronomy to zoology, millions of everyday people are choosing to participate in the scientific process. Working in cooperation with scientists in pursuit of information, innovation, and discovery, these volunteers are following protocols, collecting and reviewing data, and sharing their observations. They are our neighbors, our in-laws, and people in the office down the hall. Their story, along with the story of the social good that can result from citizen science, has largely been untold, until now.
Citizen scientists are challenging old notions about who can conduct research, where knowledge can be acquired, and even how solutions to some of our biggest societal problems might emerge. In telling their story, Cooper will inspire readers to rethink their own assumptions about the role that individuals can play in gaining scientific understanding and putting that understanding to use as stewards of our world. Citizen Science will be a rallying call-to-arms, and will also function as an authoritative resource for those inspired by the featured stories and message.
Buy: Available December 20th through Amazon pre-order or check your local bookstore
Borrow: Ask your local librarian.
The Rightful Place of Science: Citizen Science
By: Darlene Cavalier and Eric Kennedy
This volume in The Rightful Place of Science series explores citizen science, the movement to reshape the relationship between science and the public. By not only participating in scientific projects but actively helping to decide what research questions are asked and how that research is conducted, ordinary citizens are transforming how science benefits society.
Through vivid chapters that describe the history and theory of citizen science, detailed examples of brilliant citizen science projects, and a look at the movement’s future, The Rightful Place of Science: Citizen Science is the ideal guide for anyone interested in one of the most important trends in scientific practice.
Buy: Purchase online
Borrow: Ask your local librarian.
Citizen Scientist: Searching for Heroes and Hopes in an Age of Extinction
By: Mary Ellen Hannibal
Here is a wide-ranging adventure in becoming a citizen scientist by an award-winning writer and environmental thought leader. As Mary Ellen Hannibal wades into tide pools, follows hawks, and scours mountains to collect data on threatened species, she discovers the power of a heroic cast of volunteers—and the makings of what may be our last, best hope in slowing an unprecedented mass extinction.
Digging deeply, Hannibal traces today’s tech-enabled citizen science movement to its roots: the centuries-long tradition of amateur observation by writers and naturalists. Prompted by her novelist father’s sudden death, she also examines her own past—and discovers a family legacy of looking closely at the world. With unbending zeal for protecting the planet, she then turns her gaze to the wealth of species left to fight for.
Combining original reporting, meticulous research, and memoir in impassioned prose, Citizen Scientist is a literary event, a blueprint for action, and the story of how one woman rescued herself from an odyssey of loss—with a new kind of science.
Buy: Check your local bookstore. Purchase online.
Borrow: Ask your local librarian.
SciStarter Tee-Shirt
Represent your love of citizen science at all times with the official SciStarter tee-shirt!
Buy: Purchase through the SciStarter Store
