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Events, Games, Physical, Research

The Scientific Village Fete at New Scientist Live

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From 22 to 25 September, we ran the Scientific Village Fete at New Scientist Live, a four-day festival of ideas and discovery.

Our corner of the festival invited passers-by to play traditional village-fete-style games – but with an astronomical twist.

In the Planet Shy, people threw balls coconut-shy style – but their aim was to knock down a scale model of the Solar System.

In The Two-Body Problem, a classic demonstration of how gravity works became a head-to-head challenge, as groups of players rolled marbles planets into orbit.

In Space on Earth, a co-operative game created by Saffron Parker, players put their hands into simulated spacesuit gloves and had to try to screw on nuts and bolts and tie ropes together.

And in game-show-style So Wrong It’s Right, performers drew the crowds before challenging players to go head-to-head against the quirks of their own brain, with a challenge that used the Stroop Effect to turn something quite simple (say seven random words) into a real challenge.

The games drew thousands of players over four days – including real live astronaut Al Worden, shown playing here with Sumit Paul-Choudhury, the festival director (and editor-in-chief of New Scientist).

One Easy Step: installation and talk

Events, Physical, Research

Over the past couple of months, for our project One Easy Step, we’ve been doing a lot of research into public play – interviews, observation, reading, experiments. You can see a lot of the interviews we’ve conducted here on the website – and we’ve got a few more coming up soon.

This has all been part of the King’s College London Arts and Humanities Festival, which this year is themed around play – and there are some amazing events going on, talks and workshops and installations and chances to play.

One Easy Step will culminate with an installation running from 10-21 October, and we’ll be delivering a talk on 11 October to share the research we’ve been doing over the last couple of months – so if you’re interested in the research we’ve been doing, do come along! Tickets for the talk are free, but registration is required.

The Scientific Village Fete

Have you ever been at a village fete, and found it just a little too… unscientific? Or wandered around a science festival and wished for some real festivities?

Well, we’re coming to New Scientist Live – a four-day festival of ideas and discovery, taking place at ExCeL London – with a solution to exactly those problems. You can challenge your friends and beat the clock in four cosmos-themed events at this space age fair:

  • Knock the planets from their perches in our Planet Shy – but be careful, the planets are made to scale, so your aim is going to have to be pretty good if you want to get Mercury.
  • Overcome the fallibility of your delicate human mind in So Wrong It’s Right, a head-to-head gameshow that pits you against your friends and against the Stroop Effect
  • Become master of the solar system in The Two Body Problem, a gravitational simulation that challenges you to choose an orbit that isn’t immediately disastrous
  • Prove your worth as an astronaut in Saffron Parker’s Space on Earth, a co-operative game that asks you to work with a friend while you both wear spacesuit gloves

The Scientific Village Fete will be running at New Scientist Live from 22 to 25 September.