In a big week for science, when an observatory at the South Pole has discovered evidence to back up the Big Bang expansion theory, and has observed Gravity Waves, the first Abingdon Science Festival began this evening at the Yolande Patterson Hall at St Helen and St Katherine School.
Professor Frank Close (leading science communicator and physicist) from Abingdon started the evening by saying this was the start of hopefully many Abingdon Science Festivals. He showed how Abingdon was at the very centre of science, surrounded as it is by Fusion research at Culham, the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory at Harwell, and numerous science research establishments round Oxford University.
Professeur Close then interviewed Dame Jocelyn Bell-Burnell (thought by many to have been wrongly overlooked for the nobel Prize for her work on pulsars) on her career as a Cosmologist.
In the second half Robin Ince – comedian and host of R4s infinite monkey cage – performed some his standup Science show including extracts from Darwins last work “The formation of vegetable mould, through the action of worms, with observations on their habits.”
Robin then led a discussion with questions from the audience.
(For other Science events in Abingdon over the weekend see The Atom Guide. But Visualise is sold out.)
It was a good evening – with an interesting audience too! Jim Al Khalili tonight at Abingdon School tonight – looking forward to that too. I do hope ATOM becomes an annual event, with Abingdon poised as it is between all these wonderful institutions – where better to have a science festival.
Looking forward to seeing Jim tonight, he is a great communicator of science. My daughter went to the science fair at the Guildhall today. Great opportunities to inspire the scientists of tomorrow! How lucky we are to have this all on our doorstep.
What a fantastic, inspiring and amusing evening. Well done to the ATOM team.
Along with some of the other local County Councillors I contributed some of my Community Fund money towards the event to help get it up and running and i’m delighted to see how popular it has been.
My daughter was also helping at the science fair today which seems to have gone very well.
Here’s to it becoming an annual Abingdon event.
If you get a chance pop down to the guildhall and you can see the army’s robotic bomb disposal unit. It’s fascinating and will be there until 7. Loads more events in the market square all day tomorrow.
Market place looking good this morning in the sunshine. Exhibits include
– zoobus
– nano-coatings that can make a phone waterproof
– fantastic looking vandergraf generator
– free samples of atom beer (which has sold out pretty much everywhere its been on so worth a taste)
– using molecular gastronomy to make sweets
– a device which can tell you how much metal is in any object
– a molecule hunt around the shops
Have fun
What a wonderful place the Market Place was today. I wished I was a child so that I could have done more of the activities available today…I did most of them anyway. Please, please do something like this again, it was interesting, engaging and educational…the best thing I have seen in the town for a long time. Thank you to all who spent their time organising this.
We had a great time at Visualise and the fair in the marketplace. Interesting, educational and fun. Well done and thanks to organisers and helpers.
ATOM was originally proposed and discussed within the Choose Abingdon Partnership about two years ago. A steering committee was established to plan and organise the event which was supported by local councils, particularly the Town Council, Science Oxford, businesses, research institutions and others. We were very fortunate when Professor Frank Close OBE agreed to become the Chair of ATOM.
Now that it has happened, we are hugely delighted and encouraged by the response and reactions by the many people whom have attended the events over the past three days. One person said to me “ A science Festival in Abingdon ? About time too !!!”.
We have been asked if we are going to do it again. The answer is a most definite YES. The aim has always been to make it an annual event and we will be building on what appears to have been a very popular and successful ‘first shot’. We intend to make ATOM 2015 even better and a bit larger that ATOM 2014.
Our sincere thanks to all those who came to the events and supported us in a variety of ways.
James W
Well done all – a great success and you should all feel very proud. Looking forward to 2014.