An evening of fun science

I took part in 'An Evening of Fun Science' at Burford School (glad to see it shared the motto Sapere Aude with my old school) last night as part of the Oxfordshire Science Festival.

It was certainly a wide-ranging event. We started of with Mad Science, or rather a part of that franchise, with what was essentially a chemistry demonstration. There was much messing about with dry ice, most dramatically when the carbon dioxide/water vapour from a 'dry ice shower' was used to blow white marble-like soap bubbles, which burst in little clouds of vapour. Liquid nitrogen also got a look in, freezing a flower to the be crumbled. And a couple of hydrogen peroxide driven reactions provided a bit of drama. Technically their advertising 'a whizz-bang fun presentation full of explosive fun' was a little exaggerative, as there where no bangs or explosions - but it was entertaining nonetheless.

Second up was me, giving a practical session on memory, covering a little about how the brain stores memories, but mostly giving the audience a chance to try out techniques to give memory a boost, which seemed to go down well.

Finally came Mike Leahy, an interesting character who I spent most of the spare time chatting with. A science show presenter specializing in nasty creatures, Mike has allowed various insects and parasites to bite him and infect him for TV - and had graphic enough illustrations of the work of parasites and toxins on victims to turn the stomach of some of the audience. He kept things going with entertaining drama, and had the pre-teen boys practically begging to ask questions about various unpleasant experiences afterwards.

That pre-teen boys bit reflects the most diverse audience I've ever seen at a science event. Afterwards, seeing the brochure, I notice it was labelled as 7+ and this had been taken literally - the audience was 7 to 70, with plenty of tired young things by the time we finished our 3 hour marathon about 8.30.

Did they learn a huge amount? Probably not. But did they go away thinking science was worthwhile? I think so, and that can't be bad.

Comments

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp...

Murder by Candlelight - Ed. Cecily Gayford ***

Nothing seems to suit Christmas reading better than either ghost stories or Christmas-set novels. For some this means a fluffy romance in the snow, but for those of us with darker preferences, it's hard to beat a good Christmas murder. An annual event for me over the last few years has been getting the excellent series of classic murderous Christmas short stories pulled together by Cecily Gayford, starting with the 2016 Murder under the Christmas Tree . This featured seasonal output from the likes of Margery Allingham, Arthur Conan Doyle, Ellis Peters and Dorothy L. Sayers, laced with a few more modern authors such as Ian Rankin and Val McDermid, in some shiny Christmassy twisty tales. I actually thought while purchasing this year's addition 'Surely she is going to run out of classic stories soon' - and sadly, to a degree, Gayford has. The first half of Murder by Candlelight is up to the usual standard with some good seasonal tales from the likes of Catherine Aird, Car...

Why backgammon is a better game than chess

I freely admit that chess, for those who enjoy it, is a wonderful game, but I honestly believe that as a game , backgammon is better (and this isn't just because I'm a lot better at playing backgammon than chess). Having relatively recently written a book on game theory, I have given quite a lot of thought to the nature of games, and from that I'd say that chess has two significant weaknesses compared with backgammon. One is the lack of randomness. Because backgammon includes the roll of the dice, it introduces a random factor into the play. Of course, a game that is totally random provides very little enjoyment. Tossing a coin isn't at all entertaining. But the clever thing about backgammon is that the randomness is contributory without dominating - there is still plenty of room for skill (apart from very flukey dice throws, I can always be beaten by a really good backgammon player), but the introduction of a random factor makes it more life-like, with more of a sense...

Search This Blog