London Blog

Of blood, maggots and mathematical proofs: the RI Family Fun Day

While some of the Nature blogging team is in New York covering the World Science Festival, they may have been missing out – London saw two, albeit it slightly smaller, festivals this weekend, the Royal Institution’s Forensic Science Family Fun Day and the Natural History Museum’s two-day Bat Festival.

First up for me was the RI: a whole Saturday filled with live maggots, crimes of all magnitudes and dozens of children with gruesome but happily fake flesh wounds. Spread over multiple floors were about 20 tables of activities all themed around forensic science, while the lecture theatre was taken over by talks, one of which included tubs of maggots for a discussion about using insects to age dead bodies.

The table activities ranged from flame testing suspicious white powder to DNA testing to eliminate would-be criminals suspected of stealing Fichael Maraday’s Magnum Opus. One I especially enjoyed was the mathematics table, cunningly disguised as a murder in a park.

With the help of clues, you had to identify who had been in the park on the night in question and were hence the most likely suspects, so a little challenge for you, Readers:

Suspects: Bob, Carol, James, Adam, Paul

Clues:

1. For safety, if Carol goes to the park, she always goes with Bob

2. Multiple sightings have confirmed that at least one of Paul and Adam (they’re twins) was in the park on the night of the murder

3. Either Bob or James (but not both) was spotted by CCTV in the park

4. James and Adam were together that night

5. Paul only ever goes to the park if his mates Adam and Carol do too

Task: Identify who (may be multiple) was in the park on the night in question.

Would-be detectives were led through the logical steps to identify the suspects, which led to a rudimentary explanation of the concept of proof by contradiction. This stall was being run by Marcus’ Marvellous Mathemagicians, a group created by Marcus du Sautoy consisting of current Oxford maths students who run workshops and give talks about maths all over the country.

The majority of the stalls were run by volunteers: downstairs were the alchemists – chemistry students from Oxford – doing chromatography and flame tests in the labs:

Upstairs, there was DNA sequencing (a bit like a jigsaw), fingerprint comparisons, and UV lights to test banknotes were genuine:

A genuine £10 – returned to its owner

And last but not least, the activity with the largest queue: the serious injuries table. Run by a make-up artist, children could choose between a huge, black bruise or a deep, bleeding gash:

As they were leaving, I asked a brother and a sister if they’d enjoyed the day. “Yes!” came the immediate response. “We’re going to be on CSI and do all the blood for the dead bodies!”

The Royal Institution runs family fun days every other month, with a different theme each time. The next will be Saturday 30th July, 11am – 4pm, on the subject of waves. Tickets are £10 adults, £5 children and there is no need to book.

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