Yesterday I got to go scout around Cambridge Science Festival for ideas for our upcoming Summer programme of Family events at the Royal Institution. Cambridge Science Festival has been running since 1993, and is the UKs biggest free science festival.
It certainly felt like it too, and I got to participate in that most British of pastimes, queuing, to get into quite a few venues. Highlights of the day for me included getting to make my own rocket car (mine came complete with rear spoiler and red flames along the 
side), and learning that my recently acquired UK drivers license
contains the royal crest stamped all over it which you can only see under UV light. Quite cool.
The Cambridge Dept of Materials Science and Metallurgy runs a project called NanoFen, and they had a great display set up highlighting nanotechnology at the festival. There were some nice displays of superconductors and nanotechnology in nature, showing how the nanostructures on butterfly wings alter their light reflecting properties and hence colour (you can see in the picture how the colour changes when the wings are wet).
They managed to make nanotechnology ‘hands-on’ by giving people the opportunity to make their own buckyball models, try and wet a shirt made of nanotex material and see how not even honey sticks to a spoon with a special nanocoating. My favourite display though was a demonstration of just how difficult it is to work on the nanoscale, by trying to move Jenga puzzle blocks while wearing oven gloves!
There was also a bank of computers set up by SEEK running a series of games based around engineering principles. I couldn’t get on as they were so popular and I thought I really should get out of the way for the children they were designed for, although I did see a Space Elevator in one of the games, which can be found online free here.
Adrian | 18-Mar-08 at 11:21 am | Permalink
Great blog. I really like the ‘hands-on’ nanotechnology ideas, especially the oven glove Jenga puzzle!