U3A Explores Science at the Ri

Programme

1.15pm Audience arrives

1.45pm Introduction by Martin Davies, Public Programme Manager, Royal Institution.

Andrew Hanson: Measuring Colour
Colour informs, influences consumer choices, warns us and comforts us. As with every aspect of life, it needs to be measured to ensure good communication and confidence in manufacturing processes for a diverse range of goods from pills to paints. But how do we ascribe numbers to a human perception which is incredibly versatile and variable? The challenge is enormous and human colour perception science is still a lively topic today. Be warned! This demonstration talk will contain surprises – there is a lot more to colour than meets the eye.

2.20pm Question and answer session (15 minutes)

2.35pm Anna Ploszajski: Smart materials
You’ve heard of smart phones, smart meters, smart watches… Well now it’s the turn of smart materials. In the future, solid objects will react, sense, change and move according to their surroundings. This won’t be a result of clever robotics or electronics, but rather the fundamental properties of the stuff itself. In years to come, we will be living in self-regulating houses, riding self-fixing bicycles, and driving on self-illuminating roads, all thanks to these so-called ‘smart materials’. These are metals, plastics, fabrics and fluids that react to the outside world without any human involvement, and they promise to change the way we live. In this talk, award-winning materials scientist and engineer Dr Anna Ploszajski will show you the smart materials that will make the material world around us smarter. Expect to see matter doing things you’ve never seen it do before!

3.10pm Question and answer session (15 minutes)

3.25pm Tea and coffee (30 minutes)

3.55pm Jack Ashby: The unnatural nature of natural history museums
Natural history museums are magical places. They inspire awe and wonder in the natural world and help us understand our place within the animal kingdom. Behind the scenes, many of them are also undertaking world-changing science with their collections. But they are places for people, made by people. We might like to consider them logical places, centred on facts, but they can’t tell all the facts – there isn’t room. Similarly, they can’t show all the animals. And there are reasons behind what goes on display and what gets left in the storeroom.

4.30pm Question and answer session (15 minutes)

4.45pm Close of meeting

About the speakers

Andrew Hanson
For 25 years Andrew has been professionally measuring colour, from evaluating the appearance of ornamental plants, to building the world’s first national standards telespectroradiometer to calibrate the colour of visual display units and a machine to measure the shininess of cats. He is currently Outreach Manager and Occasional Senior Scientist at the National Physical Laboratory, the UK’s National Measurement Institute and is past Chairman of the Colour Group of Great Britain.

Anna Ploszajski
Dr Anna Ploszajski is an award-winning materials scientist, engineer and communicator, and in 2017 was named Young Engineer of the Year by the Royal Academy of Engineering. She is a proud member of the Science Showoff Talent Factory and regularly performs stand-up comedy about materials and engineering as part of Science Showoff at venues from the local pub to the Edinburgh Fringe. In 2017 she was a FameLab national finalist.

Jack Ashby
Author and zoologist Jack Ashby is the Manager of the Grant Museum of Zoology at University College London. He is a trustee of the Natural Sciences Collections Association and the Society for the History of Natural History, and regularly writes and comments about the roles of natural history museums in science and society. His main zoological interest is in Australian mammals.

Image Attribution: By AnaConvTrans - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61453323