Beyond the Baths: National Science and Engineering Week 2014 highlights!

Friday, 28 March 2014

National Science and Engineering Week 2014 highlights!

Another Science Week has been and gone! If you came along to one of our events, I hope you enjoyed it! Over the next few weeks, volunteers and placement students will be posting blogs on the tables they hosted during the week.

The 'week' (actually ten days!) kicked off on Saturday 14th March with the evening event we called "Great Minds Think Alike"! We had a number of tables scattered around the museum, including a few around the torchlit Great Bath (very atmospheric!).


Having fun at Bath Taps into Science!

Everyone seemed very interested in the tables, with the children especially loving the water experiments hosted by the BRLSI and the aqueduct model worked by Tom (one of our apprentices!).

Themes included: Astronomy, Roman glass, Roman wall paintings and a chance to see a human skeleton with an explanation of the injuries on the skeleton by a medic!

All the tables were inspired by aspects of The Roman Baths site and the ideas of Roman and Greek scholars- such as the astrolabe on the Gorgon's Head Pediment for the Astronomy table and the Syrian man's skeleton being the inspiration for the human skeleton table (both skeletons were found in the same area!).

Dressing up as Romans at the Brownie sleepover!

The Saturday evening welcomed around 50 Brownies who come to the Science event and then had a sleepover at the museum (this was the first Brownie sleepover we had as part of the Heritage Lottery funded Beau St. Hoard Project and I think it's safe to safe, it kicked it off to a good start!)

During the week, we had a table a day held by the Great Bath. Prehistoric flint tools and Roman medicine were a couple of the topics covered!

Me and Huw at his Thursday table on arches!

Our final event was 'Bath Taps into Science', a science fair held on Friday 21st and Sunday 23rd. We brought along our popular aqueducts model (a fully working one may I add) and our build-an-arch activity! Kids and adults alike had a lot of fun with both models, the last event definitely ended this years NSEW on a high!