The Summer Science Exhibition is an annual display of the most exciting cutting-edge science and technology, hosted by the UK’s national science academy The Royal Society. With hands-on experiments, panel discussions and family activities throughout the week, there’s something for everyone. It’s free entry and open to everyone between Monday 4th July and Sunday 10th July at the Society’s central London headquarters.
Imperial researchers and students are involved in four of the stands at this year’s exhibition. More details on their exhibits can be found below, whilst a full line of stands and events can be found on the Royal Society’s website
Join the conversation on Twitter throughout the week’s events using the hashtag #summerscience
Plastic not fantastic in our oceans
Plastic is everywhere in the ocean, harming all sorts of marine wildlife. Explore how plastic enters and is moved around our waters. See how it breaks down out at sea and causes damage near our bio-diverse coastlines, before joining the debate in to how we might clean it up with this stand from Dr Erik Van Sebille and the Grantham Institute for Climate Change.
What happened at the Big Bang?
Explore the faint glow of ancient light that permeates our universe with physicist Dr Dave Clements and Imperial members of the Planck Space Mission. Listen to the early universe on a Planck hotline video phone and create your own model universe based on the CMB data that Dave and his colleague believe could reveal what happened in the first instants after the Big Bang.
Spider webs and silks
Industrial Design Engineering student Luca Alessandrini will be joining a stand from researchers at Oxford University looking at spider silk, and how it is informing the creation of sustainable and biocompatible materials. Luca will be bringing down two of his unique spider silk violins to showcase the properties and potential uses of this unique material, as well as providing a musical accompaniment to the Exhibition at various points during the week
The comet revealed: Rosetta and Philae at Comet 67P
Take a virtual reality trip to Comet 67P with the team behind the groundbreakng European Rosetta space mission, which includes Imperial physicist Dr Chris Carr and Operations Engineer, Leah-Nani Alconcel. There you will learn all about the ground-breaking results from the mission, and how the instruments aboard the Rosetta orbiter and Philae lander have enabled leaps in our understanding about the Solar System’s early history.