Science festival set for launch

Many of these events are organised by or involve Oxford University staff and students. You can browse the full programme on the Oxfordshire Science Festival website but here are a few of the free University-related highlights to whet your appetite (click on the event title for details): Saturday 6 March - If you fancy a musical start to the Science in your world launch then come along to Mathemusica (Broad Street, Oxford, 12 noon) where Marcus du Sautoy, Oxford University's Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, will fuse mathematics and music with the help of Oxford Philomusica. The launch will also feature University stalls including 'Accelerators everywhere', looking at the past, present and future of particle accelerators and 'Nature's raincoats', offering a glimpse into super water-repellent surfaces and new materials for self-cleaning paints, super-fast swimsuits and stay-dry bandages. Things get interestingly icky for Eyeballs and other things (Museum of the History of Science, Oxford, 2pm-4pm), a family-friendly spot of eyeball dissection mixed with visual experiments that help explain how we see. Saturday 13 March - Hands-on family entertainment is on offer at the ever-popular Wow! How? science fair (OU Museum of Natural History, Oxford, 10am-4pm). With over 20 stalls featuring fun experiments and demonstrations: expect custard, rockets, slime, explosions, and creepy-crawlies. Sunday 14 March - If you want to work up an appetite for your Sunday roast check out Ancient diets (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 12 noon-1pm) for a talk on how chemical analysis enables researchers to reconstruct the diets of our ancestors from their bones.