Close Encounters of the Science Kind at Cheltenham Science Festival

I can’t believe that it’s almost a week since my first experience of Cheltenham Science Festival. It was a week ago today that I got on a train and began my journey to Cheltenham, full of anticipation and excitement… and I wasn’t disappointed!

Working as a Science Communicator with The BBC

Once again, I had the pleasure of working with the BBC’s Bang Goes the Theory team in order to share the joy of science with members of the public. I love this kind of ‘work’… It’s so much fun that it seems like play!

The usual suspects were on hand to demonstrate a range of really cool experiments and, despite the rain on Saturday, the good folk of Cheltenham (and much further afield) turned out in force.

Dr Yan and Dallas joined in on several occasions, showing off their favourite demonstrations, and chatting to people about science and presenting. Dr Yan is a true inspiration, as there is no question that thows him – He’s able to explain even the most complex science on a level that people can relate to, and has a story, anecdote or example for pretty much everything!

Close Encounters with Some of Science’s Most Famous Faces

Anyone who follows me on Facebook will know that one of my first thoughts when I found out that I would be going to Cheltenham was ‘Ooh, I hope I get to meet Brian Cox!’… Well, I nearly did…

The events in the BBC tent included a sneak preview of the forthcoming Wonders of Life series. It was billed as an opportunity to see preview footage of clips from the series, and to put questions to the Head of BBC Science and the series Producer… So what a fantastic treat it was for the audience (myself included) when Professor Cox himself arrived to join the panel!

I resisted the urge to make a total idiot of myself by going up and asking if I could have a photo taken with him while the sound engineer was fitting his mic… Although I kind of regret it now! The poor man seemed to be being hounded by autograph hunters everywhere he went – I guess that’s the price you pay for being probably the best known scientist in the UK! (Brian, if you read this, I hope you appreciate my restraint, and the small contribution that it made to reducing the number of people pestering you!).

The next session in the BBC tent also featured some famous faces, and turned out to be one of the most hilarious things I have witnessed in a while! Adam Rutherford, Kevin Fong, Mark Miodownik and Bang’s own Dallas Campbell battled it out playing ‘Unsung Science Heroes Top Trumps’ (although Mark’s choice of Nikola Tesla was considered to be pretty much sung rather than unsung by the rest of the panel and the audience alike!). Each member of the panel vehemently defended their choice, and made the case for their particular unsung science hero to score points within a range of categories including height (Dallas’ choice of Joseph Kittinger scored well here), geek factor and, bizarrely, grumpiness… It turns out that a lot of talented scientists are actually very, very grumpy!

Close Encounters with an Iconic Piece of Technology – Enigma!

The closest encounter that I had over the weekend, and to my mind the most memorable, was actually getting hands-on and using a genuine Enigma machine. The ability to decrypt coded messages sent using this icon of the world of technology and computing was instrumental in the allies’ victory during World War II.

I actually had the opportunity to set the dials, and use the machine to encrypt a message. In a wonderful meeting of old and new technologies, this coded message was then sent to the code breakers at Bletchley Park via Twitter! The code breakers then used Turing bombes to crack the code, working out the settings on the Enigma machine and the day codes for the encryption, and Tweeted the decrypted message back.

I sent “FUG VLD YED XGWAO RVSEU ECPKQ –AQFF YKQKD RYQ”

Within 3 hours the Bombe Team Tweeted back “LAST DAY AT CHELT S-I FEST WITH BBC”

Brilliant!

What a weekend!