Top attractions include Bruno the Mars rover, The Chemistry of Light in the Department of Chemistry, the new show from Festival of the Spoken Nerd, Talk Nerdy to Me, and Dr Helen Scales shares her excitement for seashells in Spirals in time. New for this year is an adults-only session of the popular Cambridge Corn Exchange hands-on science zone, there will be a theatrical retelling of the life of Charles Darwin in The Origin of Species and the chance to discover the diversity of local wildlife at Springwatch Madingley.
This weekend, events will be focused in the centre of Cambridge with family-friendly drop-in sessions all day at the Cambridge Corn Exchange and Guildhall. There will also be more events on Saturday at the Downing Site, including Enlightened Plants, exploring the importance of light for plants and Splash and Squelch at the Department of Geography, discovering the magic of muddy, watery places. While over at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, visitors are invited to collect their Time Traveller’s Passports and discover Life before artificial light.
The Corn Exchange will feature the latest Rising Stars, a new group of Cambridge’s aspiring young scientists, presenting a group of activities based directly on the latest research. Throughout the weekend, guests will also discover more about their own bodies through Discover DNA, Hands-on Biology, Bottle your genes and See your cells. As a special extra for 2015, from 6-8pm on Saturday, this event will reopen, in a ticketed event that is just for adults; offering all of the same activities but without the need to act grown-up in front of the children.
The Festival will see the return of Cambridge Hands-On Science (CHaOS) with their sell-out Crash, Bang, Squelch! event and a new series of CHaOS talks. This year they will also be joined by the Robogals for a new event Robots at Crash, Bang, Squelch! helping to develop computer programming skills through a interactive discovery and experimentation.
For those with a pioneering spirit, the Airbus Defence and Space event, Journey to Mars and beyond, will be at the Guildhall all weekend. Alongside Bruno the Mars rover will be models of ESA’s 2013 mission, the Gaia spacecraft observatory and the 2017 Solar Orbiter, all designed and constructed in Stevenage. Space exploration at the Festival will continue beyond the weekend, on 18 and 19 March, with performances of Pioneer, a gripping sci-fi thriller about the first Humans to land on Mars and the challenges of life on the Red Planet. This will be followed by the Institute of Astronomy solar eclipse viewing on Friday 20 March and their open afternoon on Saturday 21 March.
The Mill Lane Lecture Rooms will host a packed schedule of science lectures, Saturday, revealing the hidden secrets of the Enigma machine, with Dr James Grime; Fermat’s Last theorem with popular author and mathematician, Simon Singh; and exploring the wonders of light in Light: with a twist and Brought to light: exploring the past and future of Earth’s greatest resource.
On Saturday evening, the Festival welcomes Helen Arney: In her element; joining her on stage, to perform new songs about their research, will be her trusty ukulele and current Cambridge scientists. Helen will then return later alongside Steve Mould as the Festival of the Spoken Nerd, a science-themed comedy chat show, featuring peer-reviewed karaoke.
Sunday will see a series of lectures at Lady Mitchell Hall, starring flying dinosaurs in Dragons of the lost world – including a massive model pterosaur suspended above the audience – and science at high-altitudes in Everest lab. Events will also be taking place out of the city centre at Madingley Hall, with a broadcast from the Naked Scientists and a lecture by Dr Judith Croston, Shaping the darkness: how light helped build the Universe, looking at how light shaped the early Universe and how it is a key part of stars and galaxies.
Dr Lucinda Spokes, Science Festival Co-ordinator, said: “We’re thrilled to be celebrating 21 years of the Science Festival and we’ve put together another fantastic and engaging programme of events. We’ve got Cambridge’s brightest and best presenting their latest research, alongside all of our Festival favourites that help make the Festival so popular.
“We’re so grateful to all of the scientists that get involved every year and to everyone that supports us and comes along to get involved. We’re really excited to have more events at Madingley Road this year and hope that it means even more people will be able to take part in the Festival. Last year, we welcomed 1,500 people to the Corn Exchange in the first two hours. This year, we’re aiming to beat that!”
Some of the top events in the second week of the Festival (16-20 March), are:
17 March – Illuminating life at the single cell level with Dr James Locke and Preventing the rise of antibiotic resistance? featuring Dr Mark Holmes and Professors Clare Bryant, Andres Floto and Dame Athene Donald. These talks examine the mechanisms that cause illnesses and where superbugs come from and then explore what we can do about it.
18 & 19 March – Pioneer. Curious Directive return with their multimedia sci-fi thriller: It’s 2029. The first human mission to Mars disappeared without a trace. Pioneer shuttles you from the Garden of Eden to mission control and onto the surface of Mars.
18 March – Connectivity and flow in future cities. By 2050, more than 70% of people are predicted to be living in cities. How will resources flow to and around them and how will cities adapt to the challenges they face?
19 March – Cambridge Stars: Big ideas 2. In this second event, Professors David Ron, Randy Read and Paul Midgley talk about their research; electron microscopy, proteins structures and protein folding.
20 March – Alex Hopkins lecture: mercury, window on the invisible. Mercury is very unusual; the only metal that is liquid at room temperature and its toxic effects are well known. Yet mercury has been playing valuable roles in our lives for over 2000 years. What more could it offer in future?
For further information about the Cambridge Science Festival or to browse the full range of events, please visit: www.sciencefestival.cam.ac.uk
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