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Royal Institution Family Fun Day

publication date: Aug 16, 2008
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author/source: Harvey Edgington


 
The Royal Institution obviously want to make themselves more accessible,  so have started to hold monthly Family Fun Days. Our visit to the first event was rather like being in a smaller more intimate version of  the Science Museum’s Launch Pad - but without the crowds.

We designed and launched our own rockets fuelled by Alka Seltzer, pulled the DNA out of a strawberry, made our own slime which acted like a solid when you rolled it but returned to a liquid the moment you stopped,  and used red cabbage water to test acids before we even got upstairs.

Upstairs was the famous lecture theatre, it’s smaller than it looks on the telly. Here was a rota of three lectures and we could not resist a title of  “exploding pooh”.  The final explosion did not happen due to a mistake but that is live science for you, but we now know how much pooh a human produces each day, on average 2.5g (yes really that little) if you must know.

We also sat on the world’s largest whoopee cushion as well as watching sand being made to act like a liquid and learned how to make two metal coat hangers sound like Big Ben.

Many of the experiments are simple and  could be repeated at home. The people explaining the science were friendly and engaging, never declining a question and all had an ability to make science simple. In fact the hardest thing we did was to try and follow Tom Leher’s periodic element song and trying to hit some lights whilst singing it!

Mathilde (ten) comments:
I really had a great day out. The experiments were such fun. I really liked getting DNA out of a strawberry  and making my own slime. The staff were all really friendly. Maybe I could be a scientist one day...

Joe (seven)  adds:
I had a fun day. I really liked the sand that turned into a liquid and the coat hangers that sounded like Big Ben. I kept going back to hear the noise, as I love Big Ben, and  hearing the loud ding dong of Big Ben from two coat hangers was really crazy!

We had a fantastic day out  and would consider going again. We would all recommend it. The next Family Fun Day is on  Saturday 6 September from 11.00am to 4.00pm.

Tickets costs £5 for adults and £3 for under 18s.

The Royal Institution of Great Britain, 21 Albemarle Street, London W1S 4BS