If your 12 year old daughter came home from school all excited about science you’d be pleased wouldn’t you? And you’d encourage her to go along to the science lectures that she is happily describing. As I was until I realised I had effectively talked her into it which meant that I had committed myself to spending six dark, cold Thursday evenings accompanying her to them.
So. Last Thursday I paid my £30 (this is for the whole six lectures, kids go free) and arrived at 7pm in at a modern amphitheatre at the impressive National Physical Laboratory building in Teddington. With my last physics lectures taking place several decades ago, I was more than a little nervous about what was in store.
I was immediately put at ease by the fantastic lecturer – Michael de Podesta who was an enthusiastic to the point of passionate advocate for all things scientific. He ran through the plan for the evening (thank goodness we wouldn’t just be listening for the whole two hours) and introduced a cast of thousands in terms of his helpers – volunteers who were giving up their own time. Astonishing.
He started by proudly showing photos of his recent visit to collect his MBE from the Queen and chatted about his previous work as a lecturer in physics at Birkbeck College, then as a scientist at NPL. He mentioned his claim to fame – building the most accurate thermometer in the whole, wide world, his interest (building water rockets) and his kids.
We laughed as talked us through the typical view of scientists – with Muppet pictures, kids cartoons and why everyone always thinks of ‘mad scientist’. Although the first lecture was billed as being about electricity he started with some brain boggling stuff on the scale and size of the universe – from the imperceptible to the vast. There was lots of audience interaction as he compared the size of the earth to the sun and without us even knowing we were watching a video explaining powers of ten (so, a maths class in disguise!). This included a veritable feast of all things scientific and every member of the audience – comprising pensioners, teachers, parents and kids (many of whom were home educated) and ended with the very wise statement “the universe is very big, but full of very small things”. I like this man!
Then it was onto the main event – electricity. And with just one scary Powerpoint slide containing words such as atoms and electromagnetic waves we went into our first singalong of the evening (“Eeee-lec-tric-ity”). Then he produced some balloons to start the experiments – attracting bits of paper and moving chocolate Pudsy bears (a charitable element too!). Then he showed us some kit – Van de Graaff generators and Wimshurst machines and we learned that electricity is present inside all matter accepting without question that there are two types of physical entity – particles (little things) and fields (the spaces between them) and that the particles have an electric charge which means they interact in an electric field. So far we are all keeping up. I still like this man and my considerable admiration for him is growing – my daughter is even taking notes!
So we are dismissed to go and have a cup of tea and play with the numerous balloon experiments that are set up outside and to play downstairs with yet more balloons and tins of assorted sizes. We use balloons to make loads of different things move – even sausages and golden syrup. We are having fun!
After 20 minutes or so we are back in that amphitheatre and that scary slide has returned – and it has the words protons, neutrons and electrons on it as well! Then we go back to thinking about how small things can be and we start looking at the internal structure of atoms. So we are now doing sub-atomic physics – impressive. There’s a quick diversion into chemistry to think about molecules and then we are into our second singalong from Harvard about elements. And then he zooms off into solids, mechanical properties, conductors and insulators. My head is now starting to hurt a bit but he returns to explaining things with reference to our familiar balloons and I can breathe again.
My daughter has thoroughly enjoyed the evening and is almost fizzing with energy as our bus ride home includes questions about protons, neutrons and atoms (what must the other passengers have thought?). So I am a convert and looking forward to this Thursday when we will be learning about light. Well done the National Physical Laboratory and especially to Mr de Podesta.
www.protonsforbreakfast.org
