Family fun day at the Royal Institution

This week's blog post takes the form of a cheeky advertisement for the Royal Institution's family fun days.

Myself and other Mathemagicians have been there a few times now and we run mathematical puzzles and games that are all based on a specific theme given by the institute.

Previously, we have run mathematics puzzles based on food. Here, we considered the one-, two- and three-dimensional cutting problems. We also ran a load of weighing problems like the one I wrote about a few weeks ago.

Along with the Alchemists, we also attended the family fun day on forensics. We constructed a puzzle based on ideas from propositional logic. The puzzle was so successful that it even appeared in a Nature network blog. Have a go at cracking the mystery and, do not forget, there may be more than one possible suspect.

Me entertaining and educating the public in the ways of logic.

This coming Saturday, 30 July 2011, the day is all about waves and we have some great experiments lined up!

• We will be showing how the current generation of 3D works using polarised light.

• I have constructed a Doppler effect machine (I'm very proud of this).

• What shape do water waves make in different containers?

• Finally, (if we can get it to work) we will be demonstrating the interference phenomena of light using the Young's slit experiment.

And that is just what we will be doing! There will also be lectures throughout the day and a whole host of other experiments based on waves.

Come along and bring the family, there will surely be something to interest you. For more information see the Royal Institution's family fun day page.