34 Science Haikus (Scikus) Illustrated Collection of Poems

During the COVID-19 pandemic, whilst my students were struggling with their mental health and general wellbeing, normal college work was not on the agenda for some of my classes. As a Chemistry lecturer, I decided to combine Science and the creative arts in an effort to keep learners occupied and productive, as well as giving them an opportunity to express themselves in a way that I hoped would help them through the tough times. In my attempt at inspiring them, I set myself the challenge of writing a ‘daily science haiku’ each weekday for a full half term. As I don’t tend to do things by halves, I decided that I would also add pictures to the poems to help put the Science in context. I used Adobe Spark Post with licenced stock images (and my own photos at times). The images are all square (originally designed with Instagram in mind), and would look great as posters on a lab wall or science display. I add them to the first slide of my lessons, which works well. There’s a good selection of Chemistry, Biology and Physics haikus in this bundle of my favourites. I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed writing them! For those of you who don’t know, haikus are short poems of three lines, containing five, seven, and five syllables respectively. Although I don’t claim these are in the traditional Japanese style completely, I do hope that they encourage your learners to question everything around them (with a scientific mind, of course!). 34 scikus included as JPEG files. Subject matter ranges from CRISPR and quantum computing to the mole and axolotls! My name appears on all images (subtlely, in the corner usually!).