Sir Isaac Newton's first law of motion was well illustrated at a fun science day in Dublin's Mansion House yesterday. A body will remain at rest until a force acts upon it, Sir Isaac held. And bodies attempting to remain at rest in the intervals between lectures found themselves quickly set in motion by security staff.
With six free shows all filling the 800-capacity Round Hall and long queues forming outside for each one, participant acceleration was the only way organisers could ensure everybody got in. The attempts to clear the hall occasionally threatened to cause an equal and opposite reaction. But this never went beyond low-level grumbling, and thanks to the strict enforcement of the laws of motion, almost 5,000 people attended the lectures.
The event, organised by Enterprise Ireland as part of National Science Week, was refreshingly free of gravity. Lecturers from the National Museum of Science and Industry in London demonstrated some of science's fundamental principles by means of pulling table cloths from under teasets, freezing flowers in liquid nitrogen, and floating giant bubbles across the hall by encouraging those underneath to wave their arms furiously . By the end of the afternoon, there wasn't a dry audience member in the house. Or not in the front row, anyway.
The "Super-Cool Show", which demonstrated the useful DIY tip that a banana frozen in liquid nitrogen can hammer a nail into a plank, was a popular favourite. But Ciara Murphy (13) from Celbridge identified "the boy in the bubble" as the day's highlight. The latter spectacle occurred during a lecture on the science of bubbles; although as Ciara's cousin Sinead (8) added, with an impressive grasp of science vocabulary, the effect lasted only a "micro-second".
Opening the proceedings, the junior minister responsible for science, Mr Noel Treacy, noted the decline in the number of students taking up physical sciences. He must have been cheered by the enthusiasm of yesterday's audience.
Every time the lecturers appealed for volunteer helpers, they had hundreds of small hands to choose from; and once, when they asked for children to nominate their parents as volunteers, they had an even bigger response.
But this is the least that the parent of the scientifically-minded child has to worry about. Events like yesterday's will encourage young scientists to experiment at home.
And in between lectures, in what may have been a cautionary note, the public address played Tom Jones's version of Burning Down the House.
