Hello again, and welcome to my third and final review from the Brighton Science Festival 2012. This event was again a departure from the previous two, being aimed squarely at a younger audience. Of course, I was hooked the minute I saw Lego, but I'll save that for the actual review. So, without further ado, here goes:
The first thing that struck me when I entered the Sallis Benney Theatre for Simply Brilliant was a life-sized Dalek welcoming people with threats of extermination. That set the tone very well for the rest of the evening - Simply Brilliant was very much a family affair, aimed primarily at interesting the younger generation in science.
The main focus of the evening was a number of stalls set up in the theatre space. My first stop was Sussex University's own stall, where a couple of members of the Physics department were demonstrating spectrographs. Along with a name-that-spectrum competition, they were also giving out Blue Peter-style instructions for building your own (surprisingly effective) spectrograph from a cardboard tube and a CD.
Other stalls ranged from a demonstration of a 3D printer, to a competition to see who could build the most stable tower out of Lego (I got trounced by a couple of 12-year-olds, much to my inner child's chagrin), to a stall run by some Varndean College students armed with glue guns, demonstrating recycling by gluing together parts from old broken toys to make new ones. Through the course of the evening, I couldn't help but keep coming back to this one as it slowly evolved into something resembling Sid's bedroom from Toy Story.
Brighton Science Festival curator Dr Richard Robinson had his own stall as well - a collection of old toys, with an invitation for people to come and guess how their inner mechanisms worked. Dr Robinson seemed to be having as much fun with this as anyone else, revelling in the opportunity to indulge a lifelong habit of curiosity.
The evening was punctuated with a series of talks, the first of which was given by inventor Trevor Bayliss, probably best known for inventing the wind-up radio. Following Bayliss was Sussex Visiting Research Fellow Dr Jonathan Hare, who has done extensive research in the field of Fullerene science as well as being involved with TV programmes such as Tomorrow's World and Hollywood Science with Robert Llewellyn. The third and final talk of the evening was from Brighton University Physics professor Alison Bruce, a researcher with Brighton's nuclear structure physics group.
My final impressions of the evening as I prepared to leave were that while the talks had been intellectually nourishing, it was my childish curiosity which was most satisfied by the stalls in the main theatre. This was confirmed on my way out, as out of the corner of my eye I spotted one stall in the lobby I had missed on the way in. Sitting proudly atop a table was Robot Wars UK veteran Bigger Brother, practically a celebrity from my youth. I enjoyed the evening immensely, and would recommend it when it hopefully returns next year. I would suggest visiting as a group though, as the opportunity to pit your Lego-building skills against your friends is just too good to miss.
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