The FT Team had a busy but fun-packed time at the British Science Festival and family weekend last week in Swansea. The British Science Festival is Europe’s longest-standing national event which brings together scientists, engineers, technologists and social scientists with the general public. This year the event was hosted by Swansea University and there was lots to interest people, such as sonic kayaking in the bay, an indoor fireworks party at the University itself, and even a talk from Swansea alumnus Lyn Evans who was responsible for building the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

Sarah from the FT team was involved in running Down2Earth (D2E) workshops for school students attending the festival on Thursday, where they looked at meteorites and meteor-wrongs, and investigated the effects that an asteroid would have on life on Earth, using the D2E project impact calculator. She then continued the theme at the Welsh language evening event, talking to about 30 people about ‘Impacts from Space’ and showcasing real meteorites.

The British Science festival was followed by a family weekend on the 10th and 11th September at the National Waterfront Museum in Swansea. Paul and Sarah from the FT team had a stand promoting the Faulkes Telescope Project and highlighting the activities and projects that schools can do using robotic telescopes. With our ‘rotato’ (rotating potato) on display to illustrate how asteroids in space can be modelled in the classroom, meteorites and dinosaur fossils from D2E to hold, and Space made Simple’s VR simulation of the International Space Station, there was plenty to keep the thousands of people who came through the museum doors interested!

For more information on using the rotato in your classroom and how to link this to observations using the Faulkes robotic telescopes, take a look at our resources site here: http://resources.faulkes-telescope.com/course/view.php?id=92  and for more general Solar System activities, here: http://resources.faulkes-telescope.com/course/category.php?id=5

If you’d like to know more about the D2E project, including how to simulate impacts from space, or how to borrow meteorites and dinosaur fossils if you’re a school in Wales, have a look at the Down2Earth website here: http://education.down2earth.eu/