Daleks, Darth Vader and Dr. Who characters were roaming the streets of Cambridge last Saturday, 19 March, while young children were building hovercrafts and extracting DNA from kiwi!

Konnie Huq, presenter of Blue Peter, and the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge Professor Alison Richard opened the Cambridge Science Festival to thousands of visitors on Saturday morning.

This year’s theme was time travel and people of all ages from around the county had the opportunity to do just that while learning about Einstein’s relationship to chocolate and ice-cream and contemplating the end of the universe and what that might look like!

Interactive activities included the Jitterbug Ball, where families got to design and built a Jitterbug Dancer to dance at the Ball, the wall of words where people created their own poetry equation with the giant ‘wall magnet words,’ and the creation of a scale model of the solar system, on a large scale so that the distance from the Sun to Pluto is half a mile.

Spotlight of Science, the popular series of evening lectures for those over 14 attracted hundreds again this year and topics included diet and health, the environment, mental time travel, stem cell research, iris recognition and Einstein’s theory and experiments.

“We are thrilled with people’s response this year. All of the scientists’ work towards this event has definitely paid off and we appreciate the time and effort they put into this,” said Nicola Buckley, Cambridge Science Festival co-ordinator.

This has been the Cambridge Science Festival’s 12th year. Every year the Festival hosts over 100 events and is one of National Science Week’s major initiatives. Its aim is to interest school children and adults in the scientific research going on throughout the University, and to encourage school pupils to consider studying science in the future.

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