Glasgow Science Centre

The Big Bang Scotland is taking place today across the river in the SECC today. The event aims to inspire and enthuse young people about pursuing careers in STEM, through interactive and educational activities for young people. This echoes our own charitable mission- to promote science in a fun and interesting way.

Our On Tour team is there as part of Glasgow City of Science, whose role is to pull together partners from local authorities, academia, industry, and organisations with an interest in science and science engagement, to focus on how we improve lives.

There are workshops, school competitions, science busking, presentations and lots more happening over the course of today.

Here is a few pics we took this morning of us and our other City of Science partners:

BodyWorks on Tour

Call the Midwife, University West of Scotland

Paramedics Emergency Response, Scottish Ambulance Service

Prosthetics and Orthotics, University of Strathclyde

Secret Service of NHS, IBMS

As well as exhibiting at the event, taking part in the school 3 minute challenge AND doing workshops, our very own Dr Robin Hoyle and Heather the Weather was judging one of the school competitions. We grabbed them mid-judging for a quick snap

In just over two weeks, the schools will finish up for the summer holidays. We have a lot of activities on over the summer with electrocution and fountains of flames in the Science Show Theatre, car launching and puppetry in our workshops and in the lab there will be toothpaste making!

So here is our guide to what’s on in the Science Mall over the holidays:

Get Active in the Science Show Theatre

In the words of King Julien XIII, Lord of the Lemurs, “we like to move it, move it, ya like to move it!” You will be moving your body in this live science show as we delve in to the good, bad and ugly sides of exercise! There is the super keepy up challenge (yes even the mums and dads get involved in), see the effects on lactic acid on your body, will you volunteer for the butt head game, electrifying electrocution, pump your muscles and then we set stuff on fire. Good eh?

Workshops

Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow? Well, we have the answer in our seed survival workshop as you take a look inside a seed and find out how plants and flowers grow, scatter and survive?

Build a car in our Total Rampage workshop and then? Why drive it off a really big ramp of course! See how far your car will go- the further it travels, the higher up the leader board.

Design, build and test your own shadow puppet using different materials plus take your wee creations home to put on your own show!

Live Labs

Discover the science behind running blades and how advances in technology are pushing the boundaries of human capabilities.

Want to make your mouth minty fresh? Want your teeth to sparkle? Well come along to our toothpaste lab and learn the science behind it and make your very own toothpaste!

Entry to the Science Show Theatre, Live Labs and Workshops are free with your Science Mall entry.

Plus there will be planetarium shows and 3D science films in the IMAX! Check out what’s on each day by checking our website!

The Big Explorer- our area for mini scientists- is getting a mini makeover. In time for the summer holidays, this visitor favourite, will be getting an exhibit refresh and some maintenance. Don’t fear, The Big Explorer will not be closed off but some areas may be blocked off during your visit so please bear with us.

As well as a general spruce up, there will be an exhibit refresh with some things leaving to make way for some fantastic new exhibits. Da-da, da-da, dadadada…there’s something in the water!  The first new addition will be a sound shark exhibit. You will be able to put your hand in the shark’s mouth and make music (don’t worry he doesn’t bite!).  This is an artists impression of the new exhibit:

In keeping with the maritime theme, there will be a new puppet theatre which will look like a boat. The kids have loved putting on their own little plays so we are making this our dedicated puppet area. Here is a concept drawing of the theatre:

The Captain’s bridge will also be getting a new addition with a sensory area that will stimulate your little ones senses and allow them to explore. The walking piano will be getting replaced with a brand new one. Check out the pic below:

Favourites like the crawl tunnel, crates and transport table will be getting some TLC by our technicians and will be better than ever before! The schools are out at the end of the month so we better get cracking!

So we have taken a bit of a blog holiday after all our hard work getting BodyWorks ready. Since the exhibition opened on March 28^th, 72,640 people have visited the exhibition- including almost 20,000 school pupils from across Scotland. It has been great to see people of all ages interacting with BodyWorks from the small scientists running in the hamster wheel and becoming a mucus ninjas to, shall we say, the more mature visitor studying the complexity of the 3D brain and performing an autopsy.

We have received some great feedback from our visitors:

“The bodyworks exhibit was fantastic! Inspiring even”

“The new BodyWorks is fabulous. Really informative and fun. We spent 1.5 hours up there and still didn’t get round everything. Well done!”

“We all very much enjoyed the new body works floor, it is well laid out, has great interactive exhibits and is very informative”

“This is great to have it all in one place. My kids are very different but there is something for everybody! For the children’s education, this is the best value by far.”

“Absolutely fantastic we ranged from a two year old to an adult with a medical degree. All of us loved it.”

Have you visited BodyWorks? We would love to know what you think about it.

In other news we have had our busiest year EVER with 270,368 visitors to the Science Mall in the financial year 2012-13. This boost in numbers is a great recognition of all the hard work that we have done in the last 12 months. It has been an extremely positive year for us and we are proud as punch of what we have achieved.

So what’s next? We are working to bring a brand new exhibition to the Science Mall but that is all we can say for now (stay tuned).There are a lot of things in the pipeline for GSC and it is a very exciting time for us. So for now let us leave you with a teaser- what area in the Science Mall is getting a revamp in time for the summer? We will share the details here later this week.

BodyWorks will open to Glasgow Science Centre visitors in less than 24 hours. Eeeeek! Before that we need to do the final, final finishing touches and host a BodyWorks launch event for over 500 people.

Our behind the scenes night with some of our passport holders went really well. Guests put the new exhibits through their paces -  helping us spot some final tweaks to make. A big thank-you to everyone who came along… one of the comments of the night came from a youngster who told his mum, “that was absolutely epic!”

Here are some photos from the night

We are looking forward to welcoming our guests tonight for the launch and 10am tomorrow morning! #doorsopen

100 lucky passport holders are going to get a behind the scenes exclusive look at BodyWorks tonight. We are not 100% finished but this little taster session will give our visitors an idea of how great the new exhibition is!

It is all hands to the pump as the doors will open in just over 2 hours. Here’s how we are looking.

If you are coming along tonight please get in touch here, facebook and twitter to let us know what you think!

We cannot believe in just over 8 days we are going to be opening the doors to BodyWorks. However, for some lucky people they will be able to experience our brand new exhibition before anyone else.

130 of our Science Passport holders have been lucky enough to get an exclusive behind the scenes visit to the exhibition this Thursday. We are really looking forward to getting their feedback about BodyWorks. Until then, here are some shots from Floor 3.

Sharon tries her hand at Muccus Ninjas

Sprint track being installed…

The Live Lab is taking shape

Over the next couple of days, the software for the Virtual Autopsy Table exhibit will be installed. We are very excited as we will be the only attraction in Scotland to have one and soon the whole of the UK (the British Museum temporarily has one, and very popular it is too).

The table has three real data sets and visitors will be able to peel back the layers to learn more about the body including identifying a cause of death.