 As in, why does this piece of science matter? Why does it matter for our Canadian heritage? Why is it part of our national museums? And they're developing a very important science literacy skills that they're gonna share with you today. They've not only had the opportunity to learn leadership skills to give them the confidence to present today, but they've visited and toured the Canada Aviation and Space Museum, the Canada Agriculture and Food Museum, as well as our conservation laboratories where they've interacted with museum staff. And I can tell you I've heard nothing but amazing things about the work you guys have been doing with our staff and our team. They also had some pretty unique opportunities, as Wendy mentioned. Meeting David Saint-Jacques on Monday, our astronaut who's heading up into space in 2018, Yay David, as well as to introduce David and others to their so what in our Life in Orbit exhibition speaking to gravity, water recycling in space, and radiation in space research. One leader was able to appear on television yesterday to share their so what, and as well to spend time with our special guests who will be here later today with you. They've also had youth and teacher mentors along the way helping them out. So a big round of applause for Wendy McPhee Ebs and Nori Gowan for their work on this project. So we're just gonna flip that website over because I have one more challenge I'm gonna put out to you guys that you need to tackle. Not today, but in the weeks to come. The Canada Science and Technology Museum which you guys probably know is closed until late into 2017, recently launched a national contest inviting students ages four to 19 to celebrate the role of creativity and the arts in science. By submitting an original work of art that asks the question and answers how does science inspire you? It's delivered in collaboration with House of Paint and the contest reflects evolution in the museum's core themes of science, technology, engineering and mathematics known as STEM to include the arts becoming steam. The shift recognizes that creativity in the arts are often the inspiration for advances in the science spectrum. Local graffiti artists were gonna replicate the five winning submissions onto a much larger mural on the hoarding walls at the museum's construction site later in June. Now there's contest prizes valued up to $1,000 for the five winners for your classroom. Those include 3D printer and some other cool stuff. Now Queen Elizabeth, I know some of your students have already submitted some amazing works of art. We're probably seeing some of those up here. We have until June 6th to submit your deadlines. So I do encourage you to work on that. It's easy on our website and we'd love to see some great art coming from the schools that are here today. So I'm gonna turn you back over to your hosts. I wanna thank you. I hope you have an inspirational afternoon and I know you're inspiring all of us at the museum. Thank you. Thank you, Christina. Those were some wonderful words. And now moving on, we're gonna introduce our guest speaker and her name is Simone Yatch. She is a professional YouTuber from Sweden. She specializes in robotics and she'll be co-hosting in a YouTube channel called Tested with Adam Savage, the guy from Mythbusters. So everyone, welcome Simone. Hey everybody, how are you? You're good? Can we, are we getting a little bit of feedback on my mic? It's good? And hey to the people on the internet watching this too. So people watching the live stream. So my name is Simone Yatch and I'm here with you. Okay, here we go back. Should I stand here at the podium? Pretty bad robots. So now you can think that I'd actually built these microphones, but I have not. Should I just, is it okay if I just talk? Nope, I have to stand here. Okay, so I'm gonna talk about the importance of building useless things, or at least why it has been very important to me. Now I'm gonna start with a story from when I was eight years old and I was this really happy, cheerful kid. And I had an idea that I wanted to build a robot, but I didn't know how to do it because building robots is really complicated. How do you even get started? But one thing I did know how to do was to work with wood. So the way I built my robot was I got a block of wood and I drilled a hole through it and then I put a stick through the hole. And the way this was a robot, brace yourselves, the way this was a robot was that if you wiggled one end of the stick, the other end would move too. And eight year old Simone was like, it's alive. And I know what you're all thinking. You're like, God damn, this girl's a genius. Somebody should throw a ton of money at her. But looking at my robot as a grownup, I realized it's not that good. I don't think it even qualifies as a robot. But that's one of the biggest differences. No, oh. Building things as a grownup is that when you're building things as a kid, nobody really expects you to build useful things. And most of all, sometimes you don't even expect it of yourself. So I was really happy with my robot when I built it. A lot of things have changed since I was eight years old. I'm a lot happier nowadays. But one thing, I don't look happy. No, I know. And this thing, this was a really, yeah, but that's the joke. Is it falling flat? Yeah, maybe. My sister took this photo. It was actually a really good day. I'm just, my face just does that, I think. I'm actually happy in this photo, for real. Anyway, but one thing that hasn't changed is that I still build a lot of things. So you know when you're at, I'm gonna show you one of my inventions. And you know when you're at a theater or at the movies and you have to clap your hands a lot. Even now, when you're here, you have to clap your hands a lot. And it gets pretty tiring, right? Sometimes your hands even start hurting. Maybe not. Maybe it's just when you get older. My hands start hurting and I thought there must be a better way to do this. Maybe I can build a machine that can clap its hands for me. So I built the applause machine. And this machine is great for when you have hands, but you don't wanna use them. The next one I'm gonna show you is great for when you have hands, but you don't wanna have them anymore. Because I built a machine to help me chop vegetables. Please don't do this at home. Your parents are gonna be very upset with me then. But by some weird miracle, this has actually become my job. This is what I do for a living. So I run a YouTube channel about robots and people have even started calling me the queen of shit. Oh, probably can't say that. The queen of not so perfect robots? Oh, you have a channel? I'll subscribe to your channel. And that brings me to the first point as to why it's important to build useless things. I'm just gonna, just look away now. Oh, oh, oh, no, just look away. Because if you find the things you do interesting, there are probably other people who do too. And this was how I got started doing what I do today. Because I just built these robots because I thought it was fun. I just did it for myself. But I started posting them online and it turned out that there were a lot of other people who liked them too. So a lot of weird things started happening because the people who liked it, they started sharing it and then even more people started sharing it. And then all these different magazines started writing about it. And then people like Conan O'Brien tweeted about it. We're realizing just now, do you know who Conan O'Brien is? Oh, you know, okay, good, good, yeah. Because otherwise this would not be as cool. Yeah, this clip, by the way, has been viewed around 80 million times. So there's a chance that I am the person in the entire world that most people have seen getting slapped in the face with a rubber arm. Just putting it out there. And all these different TV shows started showing it. This is a Japanese TV show show of my breakfast machine. This is what it all comes back to. If you find the things you do interesting, there are probably other people who do too. I never planned for any of this to happen. I just did stuff that I thought was fun and then other people tagged along. And I understand that my example might be a little bit extreme, but I think even if there's only just one other person who like what you're doing, that's enough. So a lot of people think that I'm an engineer, but I'm actually not. I'm self-taught in both hardware and software, so I'm self-taught robot builder. And I think that when you're building things, one of the best ways to learn how to build things is by building them. So I think learning by doing is a really powerful tool and that's like not only reading about it in a book, but actually learning by trying things out. So when you're learning by doing in science, it's about trying science out. And learning by doing is maybe, I mean, it's great for many things, but maybe it's not really great if you're a doctor. I'm thinking learning by doing is not a good idea. You can't be like, oh, I've actually never done this before, dear patient. But let's just try cutting a little bit here and see what happens. So learning by doing is not a great idea. Or if you're an airplane pilot, it's maybe not a great idea, because you're like, shh, ladies and gentlemen, I have never before flown an aircraft, but I'm Googling it right now, so please take your seat. But if you're learning how to build things, I would say it's the best way to learn. And it's actually how I got started. And always when I build stuff, it's very focused on the idea. I have this idea that I really like, and then there are just a bunch of things that I have to learn along the way to build this. So I like to think of it as ideas first and tools later. And to me, this really makes sense. But in school often, and especially when you get older, when you're in high school and university, often it's the other way around. You learn a lot of tools, and then maybe you get to apply them to different things. But I'm very ideas first, tools later. And the idea that got me into hardware was actually to build, so you know websites. It's not a trade question, you know websites. And websites, they live on the internet, right? They're digital, they're not like a shirt or like a bottle of water, they're digital, right? So my idea was, how would it be if you built a website that was physical so you could actually touch it and play around with it? And what this idea came down to was that I wanted to build a website that was a live webcam broadcast. So this like gray square would just be a live feed. And it would be like these blocks of wood. And when a user pressed any of these buttons on the website, the block of wood would turn. So basically you would control it over the internet. And at this time, I'd programmed a few websites. I'd done a little bit of website programming. But I had no idea how to make the internet talk to physical things. How can you move something when somebody presses a button on a website? How can you make something move in real life? But I remembered, have you heard the expression all roads lead to Rome? Yeah, so the internet, on the internet, the equivalent of that is that everything on the internet leads to cats. Because what I remembered was that I see this website, it was a cat shelter and they had this website where you could go online and you could play with the cats. So you basically press one of these buttons and then these cat toys would move around. And I was like, yeah, this is, I mean this is the same thing as I wanna do, right? So I contacted the company and was like, hey, how have you built this? And they were very, they were like, oh, sorry miss, we're kind of the only people in the entire world that do this, so we can't tell you, it's a trade secret. And I was like, what, how can you not tell me? But what I did find was the open source hardware community. And what that means, what open source means is that everybody shares the work they do. They're not very like, oh, this is my idea or this is my technology. Everybody shares the stuff. And that's what I really love about it. So these here are computers. They're tiny computers. They're about, yeah, the biggest one there is about this height. And they're very good, they're not very smart, like they're not as smart as your laptop, but they're very good at controlling motors or reading temperature or different things. They're very good at interacting with the physical world. And I have these in almost every of my projects. They're kind of the brain in the project. And I'm actually, I brought a project. Oh wow, there's a riot out there. Oh, now it's gone. So this is actually my latest project. It's a hair washing robot that washes your hair for you. I'm gonna leave the mic now for a little bit. Let's see if it works. Thank you. So yeah, I use these in almost every of my projects and it leads me to the last point about why it's important to build useless things. What was that? Oh wow, he's really eager to get a new subscriber. Oh wow, you have a lot of YouTube channels. Well, it's good to what? Okay, we'll talk later. The last reason why it's important to build useless things. Because your ideas might be smarter than you. Good ideas might turn out to be bad and bad ideas might turn out to be good, but you won't know unless you actually build them and try them out. So it's kind of like that time when I realized that Mona Lisa doesn't have any eyebrows. Have you ever thought about that? She doesn't have any eyebrows. So, oh, you've thought about that? I was awestruck first time I thought about that. I was like, whoa, it's true. My life is a lie. And I thought, I can fix that. And this is a pretty bad idea with a bad outcome, but at least I tried, right? So another example is I thought, can I have a robot put on makeup on me, put on lipstick? So I tried to program a robot arm to do it. It was a pretty good idea, but the outcome wasn't that good, maybe? But a more serious example, and I love using the word serious whenever I talk about my toothbrush helmet, a more serious example is my toothbrush helmet. Because I posted this, this is actually the first project that I posted online and the first one that started going viral. And I posted it online and what surprised me was that I got a lot of, I mean, I got a lot of comments, but I got a lot of comments from people who were like, hey, Simone, we understand this is just for fun, but this would actually be amazing for people with mobility issues. And that just blew my mind. Because here I am, I've built something only for fun and because I can't find other stuff to spend my time on. And somebody actually finds a legit use case in that. So your ideas might be smarter than you. So now in honor of useless contraptions, I would wanna do a brainstorming exercise with you. Have you ever done a brainstorming exercise? Yes, some of you, it's good fun. So we're gonna do one, it's one of my favorites, it's called the brick. So what I want you to do is, I want you to find, turn to the person sitting next to you and I'm gonna give you three minutes, I'm gonna give you three minutes to come up with as many use cases for a brick as you possibly can. And no ideas are bad ideas, anything works. So the first one is building block, but what else can you use a brick for? Can you use it as a plate? A question? Shh, shh, shh, shh, question? Okay, okay, wait, I'm gonna give you three minutes and then just talk to each other and come up with as many ideas as you can. Are you ready? Okay, go. So you have two minutes left. Let's see if anyone can get to 30 ideas. 30 ideas with a brick. I'm gonna touch that, that would go even better. 30 seconds left. Let's try to come up with two more ideas. 30 seconds. Why, what about you? Yeah? You're building a bridge, you're building your home, you're building a legitimate use of paper, or making a website, add words onto the brick on the website, or you're playing it sound cool. What about you, Scott? A nail file? Yeah. Yeah, you're gonna get shirt nails from that. What about you? A dog house? Yeah, do you have a dog? A dog house, that too. Dog, dog, human, trees, anything works. What about you, you're just a weapon? Yeah, should someone do that? I'm gonna get in trouble. What about you? Is this good? Okay, last one, what about you? A dog food or water bowl? Yeah, that's legit. I thought you said football? For some reason. And I was like, well, sure, that's gonna hurt a lot. So what I really like about this exercise is the your, what was that? Roller skates. Roller skates, wow. A plane for a homeless. Why, you have a lot of ideas. Okay, you know what? We can talk more. We can talk more about the ideas later. But I'm impressed by your creativity. This is really good. So what I like about this exercise is that it forces you to think outside of good ideas because you're very quickly gonna run out of good ideas, right? And you have to take something like the little bit, and then in the end of it, you're even out of ideas that are a little bit, hmm, and then you have to get into bad ideas. And I think that's where a lot of the creativity happens. Because it might not be that you use a brick for it, but maybe you find something else in that. Maybe you can use something else to build that idea you had. So thank you so much for listening. I'm at Simon Yatch on pretty much all social media. And yeah, thank you to our live streamers for watching too. And thank you so much to the Space and Aviation Museum for having me. Yeah. Thank you. We'll have some questions now. So does anyone have questions for Simone? Raise your hand if you choose. Um, yes. What's your stage? It's at Simon Yatch as well. I think, but I'm not very good at Snapchat. I don't understand it. I'm just always... I don't know how to get the funny faces. No, they just... You're supposed to hold your face. You're supposed to hold your face, yeah. I just never... And I don't understand because a lot of people add me and then I'm like, do they see my stuff or do I have to add them back? What am I gonna do? I don't know. But yeah, Simone, yeah, I try. I try not to. Okay, how about you over there? How many places have you visited and did this presentation? With this presentation? Yeah. I've... Not that many. I've mainly given... So I'm from Stockholm, Sweden. And I've mainly given the talk there. But I've done it... Yeah, this is... I think this is the first time I've traveled with it, actually. No, I was in Hong Kong. Okay. Yeah, Hong Kong. Yeah. It's good. Okay, how about you over there? How many countries have you been presenting this? This talk? How many times I've presented it? Like, how many countries you've been? How many countries you've been in? Overall. Just overall, throughout my life. I think I've been... I counted... I've been... I've lived in four countries. But I... It was like 27th or something? I traveled a lot when I was younger. Okay. When you were in Japan, was the food like in China? Like, was it good? The Chinese food? Yeah. Yeah, gosh, I used to live in China. So I moved to China as an exchange student when I was 16 in high school. And gosh, I'm just hooked on Chinese food. It's my favorite. It's so good. Yeah, I can eat for days. Okay, you invested all of your money. Yep, you... Did you first use Lego a lot before you actually built the robot? Mindstorms? Yeah. No, so, like, when I was growing up, I don't think we had mindstorms. I played with Lego a lot. But I just started... I didn't really start in that way. Right? I don't know, okay, there we are. But I would really want to try mindstorms out. I think it sounds like a lot of fun. Can you have a look? Okay, thank you. I have a major YouTuber. So how many major YouTubers have I met? Yeah, I met this guy over here. I'm Amy. Yeah, and you're a knowledge YouTuber. A lot of them, like, they're very friendly and have helped me out a lot. Casey Neistat? What? Have you ever talked to Casey Neistat? Have you ever talked to a computer guy? No, I haven't. No. Let's do everything else. I don't want to do anything else. What's the matter? I don't want to talk to you. Can we just finish? Just say girl's name, shot, and I'm going to do... I don't know about that. He talks a lot about her period. Oh! That's good. Her period is not... This is important stuff. I'm not even... Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. It's over. What advice would I give you and you in back here? I think the best advice I have is to not be too concerned with what you know or not know. And just if you have something that you want to build, just take it from that. Figure out how to build it and just you're going to learn along the way. I think I've never learned anything in the way that, or with hardware or programming, by like opening a book and being like, okay, let's learn about transistors. It's always been like, oh, I have this thing I really want to build. How can I do it? So I think that's just finding good ideas that you really feel strongly for and then just learning by doing that. Yeah, she's like, oh. Yeah, yeah. So have you watched The Ellen Show? Yeah. Sweetest. I haven't been, I haven't been the best on it for Shiba. And it was, and I didn't know about it. So I just forgot to go, bunch of people having written me. We were like, oh, I remember The Ellen Show. It was very weird. Yeah. She said, oh, she said that. She said that. It really is. How many subscribers do I have? I think I've had 178,000 subscribers. I'm so happy to have them now. How long did it take to get like that? So I mean, I've had my YouTube channel for a long time, but I used to only put up sketches and comedy as Swedish, and that never really did really well. I just did it for fun. I published the Truth or Telemite, I think it was eight months ago. Eight months ago. Yeah. I started working with it full time about a half year ago. Yeah. Yeah. Do you have a boyfriend? If I have a boyfriend. Come on.