science Archives - Kidding Herself

400,000 stuffed animals at the State Darwin Museum, Moscow

A good three years back Mama visited the State Darwin Museum in Moscow for the first time and fell in love. We returned recently to find that not only is it just as good as it was the first time were were there, in all the ways described below, but that they have actually managed to up the level of fabulousness even more. There is now an impressive surround sound surround video experience to greet you in the first exhibition hall, and a new touchy feely area full of interactive educational games off the foyer, in addition to all the ones still in existence in the second building.

It is fair to say that there is probably nowhere else in the world that has so many stuffed animals on display as the State Darwin Museum in Moscow.

Three large floors of them, plus more in the building next door. You’ve got dioramas of animals in their native habitats; groups of endangered or extinct animals; scenes of animals being torn apart by other animals, and other… educational… interactions; displays of a bewildering number of different types of squirrel; cases showing a large selection of dog breeds in order of size and likely ferociousness, from wolves down to those little yippy ones you keep in handbags; expositions on the topic of genetics punctuated by the stuffed remains of generations of guinea pigs; collections of all the birds who have the hooked meat-ripping beaks, the pointy fish-spearing beaks, the bijou seed-winkling beaks, the big round night eyes, the really bright feathers, and so on and so forth.

Basically, all the possible combinations of stuffed animals you could imagine, the State Darwin Museum in Moscow has ‘em, and a few more to boot. Including a walrus that must be giving the one at the Horniman a run for its money.Which should make it both one of the creepier and, after the first room or so, one of the more boring museums in the world, but it isn’t. In fact The State Darwin Museum in Moscow is now Mama’s new favourite museum, both on a personal level and on the basis of somewhere good to take us kids.

And we’re pretty keen on it too. Here’s why.

Firstly, it’s entirely devoted to explaining the theory of evolution. This is both interesting and, in Mama’s opinion, important. Interesting because Mama is the sort of person who likes an in depth look at things, and that’s not something that many museums have the luxury of giving. Important because she sends Stupendous Big Brother to not one but two church schools in not one but two different languages. She feels the need to nip any odd notions about the development of life on earth firmly in the bud that he might pick up, because, say, to take an example not at all at random, his (British) teacher has told him everything springing fully formed from the head of a god within a seven day time period is what he believes.

Hitherto Mama has been using the children’s non-fiction books aimed at explaining such things, assisted only by the odd half a room display in the London NHM or the Horniman. This makes it uphill work because, well, the biblical tale is just a better story than one which really requires you to grasp the concept of deep time and generations upon generations of living organisms first. We have difficulty understanding that Mama had a life before we appeared, so it’s not an idea that just takes a few minutes to sink in.

But now she can (repeatedly) take us to a museum which exhaustively covers all the main points in a memorably visual manner. So well done is it, in fact, that Mama, whose Russian is not up to long scientific explanatory placards and who is a wishy washy humanities graduate to boot, had no difficulty working out what the point of each section is. This, she thinks, bodes well for getting it across to kids. She and my Stupendous Big Brother certainly had a number of what looked like spirited and interested discussions while looking at the exhibits.

If the stuffed animals aren’t enough, there’s also a vast collection of animal paintings on display. Mama is dubious about the artistic value of these, but my Stupendous Big Brother was very taken with them indeed.

I simply basked in the fact that most of them were entirely visible to someone of my height, nobody told me off for leaning on the glass and that there was plenty of room to gambol around looking for the horses.

It’s not that there’s no English, mind. Each room has a paragraph or two in that to get you oriented, should you feel the need.

Another thing Mama thought was particularly well done about the State Darwin Museum were the interactive touches that have been added to the basic glass cases, and I have to say that I heartily concur. They seem to have made a real effort to do things which bring the displays to life, and really add to what you are seeing, rather than distract or, worse, detract from them.

Mama thought, for example, that the little video screens showing clips of the animals in action in the section all about animals and their native habitats was inspired, and not just because they had put them at kids’ eye height. I liked the buttons you could press throughout the galleries to hear the sounds that different animals make. And the animal jigsaws, especially the ones where the aim was to focus on the massive differences in feet, mouths or limbs between different types of animals. And! The fact that all of these things had boxes next to them to make them easy for me to reach if they weren’t at my height already. My Stupendous Big Brother liked the computer games. Name that animal! Match the animal to their tracks! Match the animal to their habitat!

There’s also a children’s play area for the under 7s. It has nothing whatsoever to do with animals, Darwin or evolution – it’s based on those big soft shapes you can move around, stack, build a fort out of and throw at each other, but that in itself provides a nice break and refreshes you for a final push round the museum.

The two interactive show stoppers, though, are on the top floor. The first is the case containing the roaring, mooing, stomping and flapping animated dinosaurs, which are switched on on the hour every hour. Otherwise, the dinosaur section is not extensive (and, surprisingly, the models seem to be made of some kind of plastic rather than stuffed), but this is pretty jolly cool to make up for it.

By far the most exciting thing we have EVER come across in a museum, however, is the giant TV screen on the wall.

At first you just stand on the designated spot and admire your filmed self staring up at a giant TV screen on the wall in the midst of a bunch of glass cases full of stuffed animals. And then, suddenly, one of those animals COMES TO LIFE. And! Meanders over to where your screen self is and if you keep staring upwards, while reaching out, you can see yourself touching and interacting with the animals on the screen. It is FABULOUS. We played with lemurs, a huge tortoise, a deer, a lion, an alpaca, the lemurs again, and yet more lemurs (we liked the lemurs). Cannot recommend it highly enough. The only way it could have been better was if we’d had the actual animals with us instead.

Also on this floor is the section devoted to human evolution. Mama, once again, would like to congratulate the curators for their sheer genius in the placement of this. Nothing like making people walk through the crushing evidence in the two floors below before you hit them with the ‘difficult’ monkey man aspect.

Hell with that, I say. It’s the evolution of horses bit you should be checking out. Radical!

Anyway, you might be thinking that it is time to go about now, but that would mean you miss all the stuff in the other building, which is connected to this one via a tunnel in the basement. They’ve got a whole bunch of experiences there – a planetarium, various 3D, 4D and, I dunno, 5D booths, and some kind of dinosaur labyrinth discovery trail which looked very exciting, all of which Mama declined to pay extra for on this occasion, although she hasn’t ruled it out for subsequent trips as it wasn’t, she says, outrageously expensive.

But for us it was still worth trekking over for the live insects, including giant cockroaches, grasshoppers, colourful beetles, butterflies, and for the variety huge hairy spiders.

I don’t know how it is, but when Stupendous Big Brother is faced with a zooful of animals, he insists on charging round at top speed, never spending too long in front of one cage. I think he is worried about missing out on something. But give him an attraction with a more limited number of creatures and he will spend hours in front of each one, especially if they fly. Luckily, I was also quite interested, and when I wasn’t they had a particularly nifty touch screen picture puzzle thing, which only needed Mama to commandeered a chair to be fully accessible.

We also skipped through the rooms on the history of natural history briskly through sheer lack of time.

We didn’t miss out on refreshments though. The State Darwin Museum has not one but two cafes, both of which were open. The first is more the sort of place you can buy a hot lunch, although Mama was also delighted that they let, nay, dragged us in and offered us a spare table when they saw us eating in the (perfectly comfortable actually) seating area outside instead. The second is more of a cakes and coffee affair, and dedicated to that famous naturalist, Janis Joplin. Mmmmmmm, cake, say I. Mmmmmmmm, coffee, says Mama. If, for some reason, you are not up for the ones in the museum, there are plenty of other cafes on the walk back to the metro.

So we had a good time. Mama’s favourite bit? The fact that in the whole museum there is not one mention of creationism. No pandering to the existence of this anti-science nonsense whatsoever. It’s great. She says. I think what edged it for my Stupendous Big Brother and I though was that the shop has a decent selection of reasonably priced plastic animal toys, and Mama was so delighted by our day that she let loose with the roubles and bought us some.

The only downside Mama can possibly think of is that you might feel squeamish about the sheer numbers of animals that have, at some point, been killed to furnish the displays. Mama offers up the opinion that, well, what’s done is done, and at least the museum is making use of the taxidermy it has inherited in a positive and educational manner. It is probably a more ethical day out that some of the live animal entertainments she has seen in Moscow and the UK, especially the ones that are run for profit. No matter how well looked after the captive beasts on display are.

But as ever, that is a decision you will have to make for yourself.

All in all, this is clearly a museum that has its eye firmly on the patronage of the under 7s, as well as being extremely appealing to the over 40s. There is even a nappy changing table in the toilets. As a result it was busyish, but still not rammed in the way that such a place would be in, say, London in the summer holidays. Things might be different in winter, of course, when it’s less attractive to be outside, and people have not packed their young off to the datcha with the grandparents for the duration.

Update: It is busier in the winter, but not unpleasantly so, and we still got to play with all the buttons and so on as much as we wanted.

Mama thinks you should go to the Darwin Museum if you are ever in town, if not for the evolutionary science, then for the shining example of how to lift a museum out of the ordinary.

She thinks, in fact, that all school children everywhere should be flown in specially whenever they get to the relevant section of the science curriculum. Best. Field trip. Evah.

Especially as, rumour has it, they let you handle the cockroaches on school trips. How cool is that?

More Information

The State Darwin Museum website.

This is what the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has to say (at great length) about evolution and creationism.

Address: 117292, Moscow, 57/1 Vavilova Ulitsa

Opening: Tuesday to Sunday 10am to 6pm. Closed Monday and the last Friday of every month.

Price: 400 roubles for adults for main set of exhibition halls. Kids over 7 are 150 roubles. You pay extra for various other aspects of your visit, including the interactive play area.

By Metro: Akedemichiskaya (orange line). Be on the front of the train if you are heading out from the centre and leave by that exit. Turn right. Go up the right hand stairs. There should be a large sign directing you (in English as well as Russian) to take the first left. Walk up that street for about ten minutes and the museum is on your left.

By Bus/ Tram: You can get the 119 bus from Akedemichiskaya or the 14 and 39 trams from Univesitet (red line) to the stop Ulista Dimitriova Ulyanova.

Pin for later?

The Experimentanium, Moscow

The rules of the Experimentanium in Moscow explicitly forbid you to bring your double bass along. A bit big, they seem to think. Mama, the former double bass player, was duly outraged.

On the upside, they are quite keen on you touching the exhibits.

This is because the Experimentanium is less of a museum and more of all the good bits of the Science Museum in London, that is to say the play areas, installed in a large open plan building, with a healthy dose of the sort of crowd-pleasing interactive weirdness favoured by Edinburgh’s House of Illusions to spice it up further.

No wading though incomprehensible installations of machinery you aren’t allowed to climb on, just three floors of push button fun.

There are explanatory placards though. And horrifyingly, many of them are in English. Mama insisted on reading some them out to us, especially when she couldn’t figure out what we were supposed to be doing. From which I gather that I may think mucking around with water is pure entertainment but actually the Bermuda Triangle sinks balls of methane because of ships’ density. Or something. Lots of learning to be done, clearly, as you make your way round the play stations *cough* experimental lab benches.

To underline its educational credentials, the Experimentanium divides its experiments up into zones of like-minded activities.

There are mechanical objects to manipulate and puzzles to solve. Mama was delighted to be able to demonstrate her superior intellect by smugly completing the one with the goat, the wolf, the vegetation and the boat in double quick time. I am suspicious. Mama is very old. I think she might have heard about it before.

There’s a electricity and electromagnetic area, where things stick together inexplicably and you can build yourself all sorts of strangely shaped metal towers out of iron filings.

There’s a windzone which has a fully sittable-on FLYING CARPET (I shit you not, says Mama, which I think is supposed to be high praise) and the real life mini tornado, which had Mama transfixed for a number of minutes. Mama clearly does not come from a place where tornadoes are a menace rather than a curiosity. I apologise to large sections of America.

There’s the optical illusions bit, where we all got delightfully frustrated trying to pick up a holographic sweetie, where we scrambled round a tilted house until Mama decided the cognitive dissonance was triggering her latent travel sickness, and where we got to muck around in a mirror maze (Dunk dunk dunk dunk dunk. My Super Big Brother has not got any better at picking his way though these). We also tried to navigate our way round a room in pitch blackness with only the shouts of family members watching on the infrared camera to guide us from the outside. We did that THREE TIMES!

There is the waterzone, which has one of those tables you are supposed to navigate your boat down with only the ability to open and close various lock gates and direct the odd current (but where everybody under the age of ten just gets sodden up to the the elbows happily driving their ships around manually). Mama thought the water was looking a tad grubby in some of the surrounding tanks while we were there and got very busy with the wetwipes afterwards, which is unlike her. But she also had a lot of fun balancing the ping-pong balls on the jets of water herself, so I reckon she didn’t care that much.

And then there’s the acoustics zone. Mama recommends you do not enter this if you are in any way of a nervous disposition. Let’s just say that the full-sized drum kit you could whack away at to your heart’s content was one of the quieter things, shall we, and tiptoe away while our eardrums are still intact. But not until you have had a jolly good go on everything, of course. BOOM CRASH BANG WHALLOP SCREECH SCREEEEEEECH PLINKETY PLINKETY PLONK.

Mama particularly enjoyed the machine where you could test your hearing of different frequencies. Her latent competitive nature insisted on turning the knob ALL THE WAY ROUND. Luckily, being a former bass player and thus sitting next to the brass section throughout her teenage years means that she has already very little hearing left anyway. Of course you are not supposed to be able to hear it, but the point where it gets impossibly squeaky is a sensation of its own.

But best of all is the bubble room. Mama and I have now been to many many of the Science Museum’s bubble shows, and while I still highly recommend them, the Experimentanium has upped the ante by providing us with all the equipment we need to DO IT ALL OURSELVES. Yes, we too have now wafted around the giant bubble wand to make bubble snakes, and we have personally stood inside the giant bubble ring and operated the pulley to enfold ourselves inside a person-sized bubble. In your FACE, the Science Museum (although with grateful thanks as our superior technique was much informed by your examples)!

If you are thinking that this sounds damp and not a little sticky you would be correct. But the room has clearly been specially prepped with, among other things, special non slip flooring and a sink to wash your hands afterwards. There are toilets are pretty close by too, which is helpful. Either way even Mama agreed that it was well worth it. WELL WORTH IT.

The Experimentanium has shows of its own, mind. No idea what they are like as we didn’t go. Mama considers the basic experience sufficient considering you have to pay extra. She may, of course, change her mind when we are in the middle of February and really really fed up of snow. Luckily, the Experimentanium looks as though it can soak up a fair number of visitors. On the day we went it was wet and busy without ever approaching the levels of being rammed full which make visiting such venues unpleasant. She is hopeful that this will hold true in the depths of winter too.

The Experimentanium also boasts a surprisingly modest shop, given the size of the place, and a very reasonably priced café. Mama would have preferred it if the café followed the usual Russian café tradition of being entirely chips and chicken nuggets free, but we wouldn’t. At least it wasn’t closed, and shows no sign of ever shutting its doors arbitrarily. And we all approved of the toys you could bring to your table and play around with while you ate. We also admired the lavishly supplied birthday party table set up next to us. If the Experimentanium only had animals, I reckon my Super Big Brother would be well up for coming here for his come the summer.

So the Experimentanium Museum is definitely somewhere that you should have on your list of places to hang out with children in Moscow, and let’s face it, places you can go and amuse yourselves if you don’t have kids too. It’s large, well-organised, interesting and educational to boot. And would stand up to repeated visits as there are so many things to play with, you’ll almost certainly find yourself fascinated by something different each time you go.

Plus, there is a trampoline park in a building next door, so if you feel like making a really long indoor day out of it, you can. I am pretty sure Mama really wants to go and jump around madly, and I am sure that we will be doing so in the not so distant future. But that will be a story for another time.

Photo Credits

Mama’s camera was being difficult on our visit, but luckily the nice people at the Experimentanium let her use some of their photos. Our visit was our own idea and at our own expense, however.

More information

The Experimentanium Museum’s website (in English).

This is what the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has to say about Brainiac – Science Abuse! the TV programme.

Address: Leningradskii Prospekt d.80, k.11, Moscow, 127015

Opening: 9.30am to 7pm seven days a week.

Admission: Adults – between 450 to 650 roubles (£4.50 – £6.50). It’s cheapest on Mondays and most expensive on weekends. Children over 3 – between 350 to 550 roubles (£3.50 – £5.50). Family tickets and discounts for those with more than three children are also available.

By Metro: The nearest station is Sokol on the darker green line.

The steps up to the exit are in the centre of the platform. You need to follow the signs for Baltiiskaya Street and go right up the massive highway as you exit the station building. When you have completed the short walk to the junction for Baltiiskaya Street, turn right along it and walk for a minute or so until you see an archway entrance to a courtyard on the opposite side of the street with a large Experimentanium sign in orange letters above it. This is where you cross the street, using the pedestrian crossing. It’s important to come back the same way because there isn’t a crossing at the top of the street. Go through the archway, and the Experimentanium is the building on your right. You can’t miss it because it is covered in actually pretty cool murals.

By other means: Buses and trolley buses exist. There also seems to be some car parking in the courtyard, but it could be reserved for other buildings. Whatever. Go by Metro is Mama’s advice.

Polytechnic Museum, Moscow

The Polytechnic Museum is Moscow’s premier science, engineering and technology museum.

It’s currently closed for a total refurbishment.

Luckily it has found a temporary home in one of the large pavilions in the exhibition park VDNKh. Mama heard was particularly chock full of interactive aspects. Clearly we had to check it out.

The pavilion is rocking a sort of ornate classical look, but once you get inside you are in a dim mysterious world of technological goodies gleaming in the spotlights of all the different ways artificial light can illuminate.

We first came to a stop in front of a large TV screen showing a life size image of a scientist pottering about his laboratory.

Then he started to talk to us! In Russian, but we were invited (in English) to hold our hands up, in which case he switches to English. I know this because Mama immediately did. The hologram goes on to give you a little overview of the section you are standing in, with options at the end for you to ask him to explain more about some of the individual exhibits.

It’s FAB.

And repeated for all of the different areas and themes. Mama enjoyed the stern Soviet era babushka physicist and the floaty cosmonaut but she was particularly impressed by the splendidly sneery rapper who introduced the display on genetic engineering, although the translation really doesn’t do him justice.

She was a bit dismayed thereafter though to find that the in depth explanatory labels, also helpfully provided in British English as well as Russian if you stab at the Union Jack in the corner of the screen, were a good few notches above her level of understanding of how physics works. And sadly this was not due to dodgy translations.

But Mama is soothed by the suspicion that the designers are being very clever and providing enhancements pitched at different levels of understanding or different levels of interest, rather than make every interactive dodad work for the under tens.

Fair enough.

So as well as the labels for the serious enthusiast, the museum has comfy armchairs which murmur soothingly in your ear about inventions and inventors for the senior citizens, child-height tablets showing short visual cartoon clips explaining things to the next generation, and an array of frankly bonkers artistic interpretations of science for the humanities graduates.

Still, Mama thought the bit that worked best for her was the section on teraforming on Mars because she actually came away knowing more about the subject than she did when she started, and interestingly, this was arguably the most traditional of the displays, with a series of dioramas doing most of the work.

Or perhaps she was just most interested in this. Too much Heinlein in her formative years.

Which is not to say that she didn’t enjoy the modern art. The one with the bank of TV screens of performance artists interpreting science was hysterical if almost completely baffling, and we were all delighted by the installation which converted waterflow into binary digits for, as far as we could tell, no real reason whatsoever.

We also enjoyed lighting things up, making electricity spark, smearing our fingers all over the many many touchscreens, the experiment to make water spike into different shapes by the power of hand held or knob-twiddled magnets, and especially the place where we were all able to lay flat on some cushions and contemplate the universe swirling on the ceiling above us.

Mama’s main reservation is that some of the whiz bang squeeeeeeee completely overshadows the actual exhibits rather than enhancing our appreciation of them, although I think she is being a bit of a killjoy there. It would also have been nice if more of the buttons were actually working. Mama in particular was disappointed she didn’t get to launch a spaceship.

She thought the doors which invited us to guess what invention had been inspired by someone observing nature closely were particularly good value, though, being comprehensible, touchy feely and, specially for my Amazing Big Brother, involving copious animal interest.

The actual name of the whole exhibition is ‘Russia did it herself’ which is both disconcertingly flag wavy and also oddly defensive, Mama says. This might be because, as most of the actual stuff is from upwards of 40 years ago, you do get the impression that Russia’s glory age of scientific exploration is somewhat in the past.

But then, what glory days they were!

Clearly the pinnacle is the TV with the water filled goldfish aquarium as a standard attachment. Papa says his Papa used to have one of these at work. Once again I am persuaded that this Soviet Union must have been a paradise. How great must that have been?

Mama’s highlight was the simulation of a nuclear bomb exploding. Now, some people might feel that this is a monumentally tasteless bit of button pushing fun, and Mama admits that there is some merit in this although, she also points out, the Russians have never actually used a nuclear explosion to incinerate thousands and condemn survivors to a particularly nasty lingering death, unlike some people.

Perhaps you should assume that what the designers are trying to do is instill awe in the visitor at the sheer scale of the power involved. And if you do, then by means of clever white out lighting, a super strong blast from some hidden fans, and a truly impressive noise which is not only loud but so low it vibrates right through you it really does the job.

If it helps, you have actually ask for the exhibit to be turned on. It gets a bit much otherwise, the docent said, and lessens the impact.

Guess who did the asking in our party?

It’s not that the museum ignores the destructive uses of this invention. Visitors are invited to reflect on what happens when science is harnesssed for evil purposes while adding to an ever-growing mobile composed of origami doves. Not sure it entirely makes up for it though. Mama clearly was more interested the BIG BADDA BOOM than contemplating the horror, and, again, it is perhaps a tad sophisticated for us kids, especially my Amazing Big Brother, who has the paper folding skills of a jellyfish.

Basically, if the aim is to make people generally excited about how utterly cool science, engineering and technology can be, Moscow’s Polytechnic Museum scores a resounding win. And Mama thinks it’s pretty exciting that given a temporary space to play with, the Polytechnic Museum has decided to have fun and accelerate right out beyond the edge of what an established museum might attempt with its displays.

So as a teaser for the eventual reopening of the main building it is very successful. She will certainly have us first in the queue to find out. And we will be bouncing up and down beside her.

More information

The Polytechnic Museum’s website (in some English).

This is what the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has to say about Andrei Sakharov, the USSR, the H bomb and human rights.

Address: VDNKh, Pavilion #26.

Opening: Tues – Fri, 10am to 8pm. Sat – Sun, 10am to 9pm. Monday – CLOSED.

Prices: Adults – 300 rubles (£4.50), schoolchildren – 150 rubles (£2.30), under 7s – free.

By metro: From VDNKh (on the orange line) you need to walk through the VDNKh exhibition park. The Polytechnic Pavilion is easy to find, being on the left of the full size space rocket.

Imperial Festival, Imperial College, London

On one level, you can see the Imperial Festival, when Imperial College London invites its alumni and the general public to come and see what research it has been doing lately, as just a series of fun activities for kids, albeit a LOT of activities, which are HUGE amounts of fun.

A scientist dips a hose funnelling dry ice fumes into washing up liquid — Fun! For everyone!

While we were there we stuck our hands into bowls of slimy snot; we had close up views of creepy crawlies such as a tarantula, some earthworms, a scorpion, and a giant millipede; we made water dance by rubbing the sides of a bowl; we crafted lollipop stick antibodies; we rode on a mechanical horse; we raced plastic tag boats powered by washing up liquid; we blow-painted pictures of our lungs; we set up dominoes and knocked them down to simulate a flu epidemic; we fished for good and bad bugs; we added to a chalk mural on the street; we used a xylophone to make slime dance; we extracted and admired our own DNA; we helped colour in a giant fresco; we fed computerised bacteria; we knitted arteries; we watched someone make bubbles out of frozen smoke.

And we certainly did not do all of the things on offer, but since they practically had to throw us out of the place about half an hour after the official ending of the event, that certainly wasn’t through lack of interest.

Children crafting lollipop antibodies — To the glitter glue table!

But the Imperial Festival is much more than that.

Swabbing the inside of your mouth to extract your own DNA — Budding scientists extract their own DNA

Magic, Mama thinks, is frustrating. The whole point of the tricks is that you don’t get to find out how it is done, and Mama hates this with a passion. Sense of wonderment? Bah. She says.

Science as done by the Imperial Festival, on the other hand, is great. This is because while the many many experiments, interactive demonstrations and straight explanations are, to Mama, pretty indistinguishable from magic at first glance, the whole point of them is to make the inexplicable, ‘splicable, and what is more there were actual researchers on hand she could quiz until she had total satisfaction. The activities were, in fact, well chosen to provide a gateway to the research and did indeed serve as excellent conversation starters for small people and big people alike.

Creepy crawlies in tanks — We spent hours looking at the bugs, and when I say we, I mean my Bestest Big Brother

Given the sheer variety of topics on offer, it would be virtually impossible for nothing to fire the imagination enough to inquire further.

My Bestest Big Brother got to ask people who actually know the answers questions about germs, a topic he has been plaguing Mama with recently. Meanwhile Mama found herself fascinated by the Bacterial Nanotechnology stand even if she did blot her copybook by asking what the point of spending fifteen years refining technology so that scientists could see the mechanisms by which bacteria propel themselves in ever clearer detail actually was. She did rather enjoy the fact that this showed signs of developing into a spirited discussion amongst the researchers manning the stall themselves though.

But the clear win for the Imperial Festival’s overall inspirational quality is that my Bestest Big Brother has been devising and conducting experiments or at least observations, frequently involving copious amounts of water (funny that), but sometimes designed to answer a question about animals, all week since.

In addition, while Mama did not do a headcount of girl researchers/ students vs boy researchers/ students, certainly any child attending this event would not for a moment get the impression that science and engineering are boys’ subjects.

Admittedly, you probably have to be a bit older than me to get the most out of it. I did not have a clue what was going on. But I still enjoyed it (once I’d had a nap). Water play, woohoo! Etc. Although I do not know why all the adults were smirking as I used my stick to push the boat across the bowl rather than whatever the heck they meant me to do. The thing moved! What more do you want?

Anyway. Basically, Mama fully intends to find out when next year’s Imperial Festival is on, and move heaven and earth to attend. She also plans to lobby Bestest Big Brother’s school about attending the pre-festival schools’ programme and sell it enthusiastically to anyone who has kids from about five upwards, and, in fact, anyone who doesn’t have kids too.

It ran into the lateish evening on the Friday, so adults should have a clear shot at the stalls without having to fight their way through a wall of small fascinated bodies. You could go on the tours round the labs and attend some talks too. Just don’t tell Mama, she’ll only be jealous.

A steampunkesque robot dragon — A GIANT RED ROBOT DRAGON!

If you need any more inducement, the food options were pretty good too, if a little dampened by showers and driving winds, with some extensively stocked stalls and a pop-up pub. While you are eating (or drinking) you can watch the belly dancers. Or listen to the band. Or the other band. Or the other other band. Or the choir. Or watch the street dancers. Or the dance theatre troupe. Plenty of uncomplicated entertainment. I bopped along. I cavorted. I got underfoot. I ate chips. Hours of fun.

Highly recommended. #ImpFest 2015 awaits. Go!

More Information

The Imperial Festival’s website.

This is what the Hitchhiker’s Guide has to say about what do scientists know anyway: systematic reviews and meta analysis.

Address: Imperial College, Exhibition Road, South Kensington, SW7 2AZ.

Opening: Friday 9th and Saturday 10th May 2014

Price: Free!

By tube: South Kensington (District, Circle and Piccadilly lines). There is a subway walk that runs directly from the station to the entrance to the campus.

By bus: The 360 stops right outside the campus. The 14, 49, 70, 74, 345, 414, 430 and C1 stop at South Kensington. The 9, 10, 52, 452 and 70 stop at the Royal Albert Hall (five minutes away).

By car: Don’t bother. Mama says. Emphatically.