Science festival set for launch
04 Mar 10
Many of these events are organised by or involve Oxford University staff and students. You can browse the full programme on the Oxfordshire Science Festival website but here are a few of the free University-related highlights to whet your appetite (click on the event title for details):
Saturday 6 March
If you fancy a musical start to the Science in your world launch then come along to Mathemusica (Broad Street, Oxford, 12 noon) where Marcus du Sautoy, Oxford University’s Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, will fuse mathematics and music with the help of Oxford Philomusica. The launch will also feature University stalls including ‘Accelerators everywhere’, looking at the past, present and future of particle accelerators and ‘Nature's raincoats’, offering a glimpse into super water-repellent surfaces and new materials for self-cleaning paints, super-fast swimsuits and stay-dry bandages.
Things get interestingly icky for Eyeballs and other things (Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, 2pm-4pm), a family-friendly spot of eyeball dissection mixed with visual experiments that help explain how we see.
Saturday 13 March
Hands-on family entertainment is on offer at the ever-popular Wow! How? science fair (OU Museum of Natural History, Oxford, 10am-4pm). With over 20 stalls featuring fun experiments and demonstrations: expect custard, rockets, slime, explosions, and creepy-crawlies.
Sunday 14 March
If you want to work up an appetite for your Sunday roast check out Ancient diets (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 12 noon-1pm) for a talk on how chemical analysis enables researchers to reconstruct the diets of our ancestors from their bones.
Monday 15 March
As part of a series of University talks labelled ‘What on Earth’ Dr Claire Vallance of the Department of Chemistry explains The chemical origins of our planet (Martin Wood Lecture Theatre, Parks Road, Oxford, 5:30pm) starting from the Big Bang and exploring the origins of the chemical elements in the early universe and the creation of the world full of chemistry we live in today.
Tuesday 16 March
Find out about our evolutionary past in A history of life (Martin Wood Lecture Theatre, Parks Road, Oxford, 5:30pm), a discussion led by Alex Liu of the Department of Earth Sciences looking at the evolution of life and its fossil record throughout geological history, including the origins of life on Earth, why the Earth is suitable for life, and the interactions between life and the planet over time.
Thursday 18 March
What if the fundamental entity was not energy or matter, but information? That’s the idea put forward in Decoding reality (Martin Wood Lecture Theatre, Parks Road, Oxford, 5:30pm) a talk by Dr Vlakto Vedral of the Department of Physics focusing on evidence that suggests that the quantum world, once thought limited to the tiniest scales, may reach much further – challenging our conceptions of particles, time, and even reality itself.
Friday 19 March
Discover how insects were the first to conquer the air and other animals soon followed in How do animals fly? (Martin Wood Lecture Theatre, Parks Road, Oxford, 5:30pm) a talk by Dr Richard Bomphrey of the Department of Zoology who looks at the way that natural selection has exploited the physical world to shape the wonderful flying animals we see around us.
Saturday 20 March
Explore the world of invisible particles at the Particle physics open day (Clarendon Laboratory, Parks Road, Oxford, 10:30am-4pm) where you can see a real particle accelerator and witness talks and demonstrations that reveal how accelerators are used to solve the mysteries of the universe, find new disease treatments, and even make chocolate tastier.
Meet nature conservation experts from around the county at the family-friendly Oxfordshire goes wild
(OU Museum of Natural History, Oxford, 12 noon-4pm). Handle live
insects and animals, see what surprises lurk in the ponds, soils and
even rotting logs around you, and find out what you can do to support
Oxfordshire’s biodiversity.
