The Langton Star Centre: First Day

Yesterday, The Times Cheltenham Science Festival 2012 drew to a close after a magnificent week of sharing the joy of science with the wonderful Cheltenham Festival audiences – thanks, it must be said, to the phenomenal efforts of the festival staff and the brilliant army of volunteers. A quick search for the #CheltSciFest hashtag will give you a flavour of the post-festival comedown most of those who went are experiencing. But it’s not been so bad for me – I started a new job today and, if you spoke to me during the festival about it, you’ll know that I’ve been rather excited about it.

I’m going to be getting rather familiar with this.

In a nutshell, I’m being funded by STFC to be a researcher in residence at the Simon Langton Grammar School for Boys in Canterbury, Kent. Working with Queen Mary University London, GridPP and SEPnet – the South East Physics Network – we’re aiming to get as many schools as possible in the south-east of England doing research through the CERN@school project. Ever since taking part in the FameLab competition in 2009, the question “research or communication?” has been rattling around – from the post-talk judging panel grillings, to conversations with many of the great friends I’ve made through the competition. After a PhD and post-doc of trying to juggle the two, I’m incredibly grateful to STFC and The Langton Star Centre for giving me the chance to be involved in a project that will let me fundamentally combine the two aspects of science I love the most. And what’s more, my new boss is Dr Becky Parker. If you’ve met the Director of The Langton Star Centre, you’ll you know why that’s seventy shades of awesome.

Anyway, it looks like I’m starting as I mean to go on – I’m meeting Ian Russell tomorrow at the Royal Institution of Great Britain about a cosmic ray exhibition, and the first (day!) trip to CERN is booked for Monday. I’ve got a feeling it’s going to be a very different kind of high energy physics.

The Banana Equivalent Dose Song

(…a.k.a. “And So To BED”.)

I’m bashing this post out from my hotel at the The Times Cheltenham Science Festival, where last night you might have been lucky enough to hear some science-based songs from Andrew Pontzen at Robin Ince‘s Bad Science Book Club or Helen Arney preview her upcoming Edinburgh show, “Voice of an Angle“.

All of the evidence* suggests that the ingestion of science in aural, musical form is effective for the treatment of a wide range of symptoms including disinterest, acute fidgetry, and light-to-mild diarrhea**. Now, while Helen and Andrew’s contributions to the field are most welcome, it’s always important to identify and nurture new sources. Fortunately, Martin Z Austwick (@sociablephysics) and Hayley Birch (@gingerbreadlady) of @GeekPop fame are running a fantastic competition — “Science Song Writer OF THE FUTURE” — to do just that.

Helen and I are just two of the judges involved in the competition (which is supported by @imascientist, the Institute of Physics, the Green Man Festival and the House of Strange) so in a blog-post-tastic join the dots exercise, the soundcloud widget above features a song I first performed at one of the Domestic Science scratch nights (Arney and Wells – also at Edinburgh this year) a few months ago. It’s a song about the Banana Equivalent Dose system, with words inspired by a chat I had with Simon Mayo on Radio 2, produced by my wizard of a brother. Technically the song wouldn’t qualify for the competition — you have to write your own music — but it should give you a flavour of the heavy, heavy punning I’m looking for in the lyric department.

So, if (you==student) {enter the competition}; else {tell everyone you know about the competition} – the entry deadline is the 13th of July!

 

* I asked a few people in the Green Room last night, and published the findings on a napkin I found on the table next to me.

** 1) This isn’t true, and; 2) such hyphenated classifications are very, very important.

NEWS: CheltSciFest & WinSciFest

The hotels are booked. The speaker information forms are in*. The programme‘s been printed, perused and packed. It’s nearly time for The Times Cheltenham Science festival.

 This year, Andrew Pontzen and I will be bringing our show “Dark Matters” to the festival:

• Tuesday 12th June 2012, 2pm: #DarkMatters in the EDF Arena – details and tickets;
• Tuesday 12th June 2012, 8pm (7:30pm doors): #DarkMatters at Cheltenham SitP, D-Fly – details;
• Saturday 16th June 2012, 8:30pm: “What is Dark Matter?” – Cheltenham Editions event in the ExperiTent – details and tickets.

There’s a review of the Edinburgh Science Festival performance here from Elaine Downs. I’ll also be chairing a few events around the festival, and I suspect there may well be some live-tweeting – follow the #CheltSciFest hashtag. You can also catch Andrew at Robin Ince‘s Bad Book Club on the Friday.

On top of that, #DarkMatters will also be at the inaugural Winchester Science Festival (20/21/22 July 2012):

• Saturday 21st July 2012, 12pm: #DarkMatters at @WinSciFest – details and tickets (click on Sat 21st July).

Hope to see you there!

* They got there eventually.