Science by Stealth, Murder and Spookiness

The last month at the Hub has been all about Science by Stealth!

We decided to run a Halloween public science event, Spooktacula, and just see what happened. We threw our doors open and the public flooded in!  Its amazing just how much science you can pack into Halloween. For a start I delivered a talk on the history of all the traditions, like dressing up and pumpkin carving. I also covered the Salem witches and the link with ergot, a fungus that is suspected of causing the strange, and probably at the time, quite frightening symptoms that people exhibited. Then the mayhem started:

Visitors on the day carved over 100 pumpkins, made deadly molecules from models, explored real hearts and lungs, made fake wounds with fake blood, made plastic from cornflour, explored a crime scene and solved a crime and had lots of fun! Oh, and learned lots about science.

The cast of "Keeled Over"

That was not all. In the evening staff took on a different appearance as the Hub went back in time to 1949, when the University was founded. Guests were invited to a black tie award ceremony that quickly took a turn for the worse when academic and prize winner Dr Peter DeKay, aka MSc student Daniel was brutally murdered. This was of course all in the aid of fun with guests from the local area all invited to help our period staff solve the crime using forensic science. The night was great fun and one we hope to repeat in the Spring with another similar event. 

What was evident that people had fun and didn't really notice that they were actually learning.....Science by stealth.
Sharon George, Nov 2012