BA Bristol & Bath Branch Einstein comes to Radstock |
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BA Bristol & Bath Branch Einstein comes to Radstock |
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by Colin Axon
We
celebrated ‘Einstein Year 2005’ in Somerset with a variety of events in an exciting programme called ‘Einstein Comes to Radstock’.
Since 2002 The BA Bristol and Bath Branch has been working closely with Radstock Museum to organise various science-related events
which have proved very popular with a wide cross-section of the community including families, young people, and adults. From the
outset we have achieved our aim of entertaining, engaging, informing, and fostering community relationships. We saw Einstein Year
as an ideal way to strengthen our impact and firmly root our activities as a commonplace element of Radstock culture. Radstock is
a former mining town and is typical of many ex-industrial / rural communities. The award-winning museum offers insight into North
Somerset life since the nineteenth century and has an excellent medium-sized, exhibition and event space.
There
were four main activities which we created:
Einstein’s Birthday Party was a family activity day held at Radstock Museum during National Science Week. The activities and stalls were dispersed throughout the museum with plenty of assistants on hand. The activities included local geology and how patterns form on sandy beaches, a competition to identify SEM images of everyday objects, short talks on Einstein, demonstrations of dust explosions, displays of optical illusions, and loads of hands-on kit about astronomy, sound, and optics.
The
Radstock Rocket Festival was held at Writhlington Secondary School, which had a large enough field to safely launch the
rockets. Blast Off 4 Britain provided the rocket making workshop, Explorerdome ran ‘stardome’ shows, Null Hypothesis magazine ran
some off-beat experiments, there were demonstrations of optical and musical illusions, short talks on Einstein and the psychology
of music, stalls from local amateur rocket groups, a variety of physics-related toys and demonstrations, mathematical puzzles to
play with, and displays of student-built rockets by Bristol University.
Science in Radstock is a now well established monthly series of talks held at Radstock Museum. This year we invited four exciting astronomy and cosmology speakers from across the UK: Martin Hendry (Glasgow University) “Getting the Measure of the Universe”, Alastair Glasse (Royal Observatory, Edinburgh) “Other Suns, Other Earths”, Jim Al Khalili (University of Surrey) “Can We Really Travel Through Time?”, and Paul Lavin (Blast Off 4 Britain) “Rocket Science for Beginners”.
“It’s
Your Universe” is a touring exhibition of truly awe inspiring astronomical images. The 18 images are all
professional and of high resolution to show off some of the most spectacular structures the universe has to offer. Iconic images
such as the Horsehead nebula sit alongside some of the latest data collected by the Hubble Space Telescope and the SOHO satellite.
The images are 40cm by 50cm and the exhibition is accompanied by a leaflet with further information about the images and astronomy
in general. It was launched at Radstock Museum and moved on to
Wells and Mendip Museum,
Weston-super-Mare
Central Library, Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution, and the
Rook Lane Arts Centre in Frome. This has proved to be one of the most productive
and succesful activities the branch has undertaken. The visitor figures have far exceeded our expectations, bolstered by the
excellent media coverage the exhibition has generated.
The
visitor numbers were excellent and usually exceeded our expectations. Einstein’s Birthday Party and the talks at Radstock Museum
were attended by nearly 200 and over 300 people respectively. These were in line with our expectations. But the Radstock Rocket
Festival (at Writhlington School) and ‘It’s Your Universe’ were run-away successes. The Rocket Festival drew double the number
we’d hoped for, with about 800 people turning up. And this was on a day on which the morning was washed out, and the afternoon
clashed with the FA Cup final! The figure of 800 is an appreciable proportion of the local population! This was lucky in a way,
as a professional event evaluator came along on behalf of the funders to see what we were up to – we passed with flying colours.
“Everyone seemed to enjoy the experience and I encountered a number of people who came, went home for lunch and then returned. Others seemed to hang about all day trying different things... It was certainly a great activity for social interaction for 10-14 year olds and a good family activity that engaged parents and children as well as friends.”
The estimate of visitor numbers for “It’s Your Universe” at it’s various venues amount to about 22,000. This is a fantastic figure and one of which we are very proud – we never thought it would be so popular. Our activities generated 14 press articles and 11 radio interviews, to our certain knowledge. The radio stations included: BBC Bristol, Somerset Sound, GWR, Star FM, and Bath FM.
“It’s
Your Universe!” remains in demand with bookings until the middle of 2006. The scheduled visits are: Paulton Hospital Reception
Foyer, Southgate Shopping Centre in Bath, and the Chard and District Museum.
...to all those who helped out at the various events. We’d also like to thank the staff and volunteers at Radtock Museum, the staff at Writhlington School. And of course, we are very grateful to the sponsors: the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council, The BA, and the Institute of Physics.
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