Let's play highbrow Blankety Blank.
'Last night, Londonist attended the Royal BLANK Summer Exhibition'.
If your answer was 'Academy', then you've gone for the obvious answer. You are Una Stubbs.
If your answer was 'Society', then you've just won a Blankety Blank cheque book and pen. Well done, you.
Yes, the Royal Society Summer Exhibition is in full swing. This jamboree of science and technology covers 27 stands throughout the marbled halls of the RS, showing off the best of UK research, from Martian rovers to the search for anti-malarials.
In the basement you can hold onto a water balloon and take a freeze-frame image of it bursting, or head next door to develop your own graphical password. Upstairs, you can test your pain threshold, watch microscopic worms mating, discuss how a hard drive works, or have your name laser-etched onto a coaster. And on the top floor, you can learn how to identify a penguin from the spots on its belly, something every Londoner should know.
Crucially, each display is manned by researchers working on the project. Most assume you have no knowledge about their subject and take you through the interesting bits at an comprehensible level. If you do happen to know your leptons from your bosons, the scientists are only too happy to get down to the nitty and/or gritty.
London puts on several hundred science-for-the-public events each year. Very few give you such access to the people who are working on the next generations of medicine, electronics and spacecraft. What could be more inspiring?
The Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition is at 6-9 Carlton House Terrace, SW1Y 5AG. Open today 10am-9pm, Wed 10am-4.30pm, Thur 10am-4.30pm. Entrance is free.
