Saturday Surrey Science Circus

It rained pretty much solidly all day long on Saturday. Someone had linked on a local list weeks ago about the Surrey Science Circus which is in Guildford, only an hour away from us. Having missed the Brighton Science Festival (expensive rather than free and on a day I was working all morning) and not managed to make Cambridge once again I thought this would be a good way of getting some science in.

We did a big family consultation about which shows to book and settled on The Bubble Show – Science Museum.
Back by popular demand! Find out the secret Science Museum bubble recipe, learn how certain materials can change the way others behave, and step inside the famous human bubble. Recommended age 5-11 (Scarlett),

Murphy’s Law. Why the Toast Always Lands Butter Side Down – Richard Robinson.Murphy’s Law is the most important law in science – whatever CAN go wrong WILL go wrong Richard Robinson takes you on a white-knuckle ride through your own mind. We see how the senses take things in, how the mind interprets them, and how we get it regularly wrong. Recommended age – any (Ady and I) and

A light drawing workshop with light graffitti (Davies) which was already booked up so we went for the 3D sea monsters film instead as the only thing not clashing with what we’d already booked.

Predictably we managed to be late leaving home so my plan of having half an hour or so once we’d arrived to get our bearings, use the loo etc didn’t happen and instead we were running from the first car park where we’d parked and later realised wasn’t the nearest by a long way, to get to the first show, The Bubble Show, in time for the 1130am start. Which meant we dashed past the big top outside where there were various hands on activities and some goodie bags.

In the end we were there in plenty of time, the show started late anyway and we should have at least got goodie bags as we dashed past as they were all gone by the time we came back out again :(.

The Bubble Show was good, the kids and I had seen it at the Science Museum years ago although neither of them remembered it was so long ago. The guy presenting was quite the showman and loved having an audience to make do what he said so we enjoyed that. I was most entertained by the kids reactions to the desks – Scarlett looked bored and Davies (encouraged by me I have to admit) put his feet up 😆

The show had been allocated 30 minutes which given the late start time was always a bit tricky to cram in so it over-ran which meant lots of people started leaving at midday when it was supposed to end in order to get to their next show – they have at least 3 events happening at any one time and the timings are not all in line with each other as some shows are longer than others which meant there was lots of moving about and settling down issues at the beginning and end of each show. We stayed til the end of the bubbles as our next show was 15 minutes later in the room next door so we were fine.

Richard Robinson was fab, very Jasper Carrott with his observational humour but with science and fact backing up his talk. He was pitched more at the adults than the children although nothing he talked about was above them and he did a quick whizz through how humans make sense of the world using the information available to us, the information we actually filter through to our brains, how we make sense of that using our memories and emotions and how we try to make it fit what we expected to see / hear / smell. He did some optical illusions, some tricks on our ears, made a mars bar dipped in lucozade look like a poo dipped in wee and then grossed us out by eating it, did some clever sleight of hand tricks and a few political jibes about global warming. He then ran out of his time slot but said if anyone didn’t have to rush off he’d love to carry on talking and about half the audience stayed.

He did various other things including talking about toast landing butter side down and taking audience suggestions as to how we could combat it – some hilarious ones from children in the audience 😆 Then he did a trick of getting 10 kids to come and join him and all give him an object to remember. He told us about the mnemonic he uses but thanks to some of the kids either struggling to think of objects and thus putting him off or one particularly precocious child who tried to be clever and came up with ‘remember to remember to not forget’ he only managed about 6 out of the 10 (still impressive but I suspect he normally has a much higher success rate). Ady and I really enjoyed his lecture :).

We came out for some lunch then and a quick look round the hands on activities. It was pretty busy and we were all hungry so we went back into the main building and sat on the stairs with our picnic as it was still pouring with rain. We enjoyed the (probably subsidised) vending machine tea, coffee and hot chocolate rather than the expensive tea stall outside 🙂 and watched some juggling and diablo acts in the foyer. Richard Robinson came out and chatted to the juggler for a while, had a bit of a go himself and then swept off. Really liked him :).

Then it was back for our final event which was a 3d film about sea monsters. Ady and I both felt it was good but not amazing, but I suspect we have been spoilt for 3d films in the last year or two by the very good ones that have been in the cinema. This was a film following the life of a dinosaur from birth to death with the discovery of it’s fossil millions of years later. It was interesting and a good story with lots of facts along the way. Both Davies and Scarlett said it was their favourite event.

As we left (still raining) the queue for the space ball was quite short so we joined it. Davies and Scarlett both had a go and said it was excellent, indeed they seemed to really enjoy it 🙂

We had a quick look round the hands on area but it was mostly packing up and as we wanted to have a look in a camping shop on the way home we decided to call it a day. A really good event, we could definitely have made more of it too by arriving earlier and booking event tickets earlier / thinking about splitting up to see more events. I’ve joined the mailing list and will definitely go again next year.

The camping shop trip is in aid of a search for another tent. We love our Outwell and canopy for long stays of a week or more and are really happy with our cheap little tent for staying in friends’ gardens or quick overnight microcamping trips but have been thinking of something inbetween for a genuine weekender tent as the little one really is very little and has no room for trying to cook or storing anything. We are thinking specifically of Norfolk and the Green Fair weekends when we will be camping for 2 or 3 nights, based quite firmly in the tent but not really wanting to go to all the effort of putting up the Outwell, which I think I’d struggle with on my own anyway. We’re trying to decide just what we do want in terms of size and layout so wanted to have a look at some errected tents to get an idea.

We saw a couple we liked (a Vango and an Easycamp) but at £150 ish I think we need to give it a little more thought before rushing in.

Back home again via the supermarket the kids had tea and then we very foolishly let them start watching Titanic on tv. I’d not realised quite how long a film it is and only checked at about 930pm when I was expecting it to be winding up to find it was on til 1135pm. That clearly wasn’t going to happen so after some debate we flicked onto C4 where it was already an hour ahead and they skipped the hour in the middle to watch the end. It wasn’t the best film to be watching just before bed with the middle chopped out and the dead bodies bobbing about in the sea took them by surprise rather so at Davies’ request I read them a story before bed ‘to cheer us up’. We had a riotous read of Stinky Cheese Man which had everyone laughing before they headed off to bed, way later than I’d planned. Everyone was asleep very quickly and no one had dreams about shipwrecks fortunately. Ady and I got to enjoy our curry, albeit incredibly late.