Happy New Year from PubSci! We will be starting 2013 with another sciencey pub quiz on Tuesday 15th January.
Doors of the Upstairs Bar of the Brixton Ritzy will open at 7:30pm for an 8pm start, so bring your brains and gather your team members (max of 5 per team) for a mixed bag of science, pseudoscience and sci-fi questions.
We will be asking for £2 per person to go into the prize pot, so be prepared and spread the word – the more people that come, the bigger the the prize!
Posted in Events
Tagged Beer, Brixton, Brixton Ritzy, event, geek, Geeks and Nerds, London, Pub, Pub quiz, Pubsci, Science, Science fiction, Science in Society, science in the pub, science quiz, social
On Wednesday 19th December we’re having a change of venue and going for a trip to the lovely King’s Arms pub near London Bridge.
It’ll be a chance for some science-flavoured socialising over some real ales in a traditional London boozer. Drop in from 6pm onward!
By the way, you can check out Palaeosam’s write-up of November’s PubSci here.
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Tagged Beer, Geeks and Nerds, London, Science, science in the pub, social
On Tuesday 20th November we will have museum curator and regular PubSci host Paolo Viscardi talking about museum collections and their value to science, society and species survival.
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Tagged Brixton, Brixton Ritzy, cafe sci, cafe scientifique, event, geek, Geeks and Nerds, London, Pub, Pubsci, Science, Science Communication, Science in Society, science in the pub, social
On Tuesday 16th October we will have a PubSci special celebrating women in STEM hosted by Dr Rebekah Higgitt.
Ada Lovelace Day is about sharing stories of women in STEM subjects who have been inspirational. Ada was born in 1815 and became a mathematician, writer and arguably the world’s first computer programmer over 100 years before the first electronic computer was invented. Talk about being ahead of her time!
We will celebrate by having a variety of women at different stages of their STEM careers talking about what they do, their experiences as a female in STEM and the female figures that have inspired them. Then the floor will open for the usual exchange of ideas and quaffing of appropriately alcoholic beverages until time is called at the bar.
Join us at the Brixton Ritzy Upstairs Bar from 18:45ish for food, drink and a chat, ready for an 19:30 start.
Oh yes, and as always entry is free!
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Tagged Ada Lovelace, cafe sci, Pub, Pubsci, Science, Science Communication, Science in Society, science in the pub, social, women in science
On Tuesday 18th September we will have PubSci regular Dr. John Hamilton guiding us on a tour of why physicists always bang on about symmetry, and how it fits in to theoretical physics.
You may have encountered John if you’ve been to PubSci before, he’s the one who has clearly explained the answers to really interesting questions like “what are the LHC and the Higgs Boson all about?” and “what does it mean if neutrinos travel faster than the speed of light?”
John will be talking mainly about symmetry, touching on singularities and string theory (and why it’s probably wrong) along with all sorts of exciting concepts that we’ve heard about thanks to the enthusiastic outpourings of Prof. Brian Cox.
In short, it’ll be an evening of really complicated science made really interesting and understandable. Plus beer.
So why not join us at the Brixton Ritzy Upstairs Bar from 18:45ish for food, drink and a chat, ready for an 19:45ish start?
Oh yes, and as always it’s free!
Posted in Events
Tagged Beer, Brixton, Brixton Ritzy, Drink, geek, Geeks and Nerds, Higgs Boson, Large Hadron Collider, London, Physics, Pub, Pubsci, Science, Science Communication, science in the pub, social, Standard Model, String theory
On Tuesday 17th July Tuesday 24th July we will be finding out more about dinosaur behaviour with Dr. David Hone.
Understanding the diet and feeding habits of long extinct species is a challenge, but it can provide an insight into predator-prey relationships, ecosystem structure and animal behaviour in past environments.
Majungatholus atopus feeding. Artwork by Demetrios M. Vital
Dave is the founder of Ask A Biologist, he runs an excellent blog and he is one of the latest additions to the Guardian’s science blogging stable. He is also an active vertebrate palaeontologist involved in some really interesting research on dinosaurs, pterosaurs and birds. That means he isn’t just reporting on this topic – you’ll be hearing about the research, results and the fossils from the source.
Why not join him for an insight into the science used to explore the feeding habits of the mighty meat-eating dinosaurs – you may never see T. rex and Velociraptor in quite the same way again!
The talk will start around 7:45pm, but the venue (Upstairs at the Ritzy) will be open from 6pm for those who want food, a drink and a bit of geeky chat. Hope to see you there!
Oh yes, and it’s FREE!
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Tagged Brixton, Brixton Ritzy, cafe sci, cafe scientifique, Dinosaur, Earth Sciences, geek, Geeks and Nerds, Mesozoic, Paleontology, Pub, Pubsci, Science, science in the pub, social, Velociraptor, Vertebrates
On Tuesday 6th March at 7:30pm Upstairs at the Brixton Ritzy we will be exploring science in the context of Arabic with Dr Anne-Maria Brennan.
Anne-Maria is a Principal Lecturer in Bioscience and Forensic Biology at London South Bank University. One of her many activities (besides music and co-writing the definitive entry textbook on Ecology) has been to organise, chair and present at conferences for the British Science Association on the Muslim contribution to science.
Islamic heritage in the sciences is a fascinating area that has sometimes been the subject of a form of cultural amnesia – why not join us to find out more about the causes, consequences and cures?
On Tuesday 7th February we will be celebrating Darwin Day Upstairs at the Brixton Ritzy.
Paolo Viscardi will lead the celebrations with a talk on Darwin’s life, his evolutionary ideas and their lasting legacy. Then we can get down to the serious business of discussion about some of the issues raised over a beer.
Join us from 6pm if you want to get food, drink and conversation. The more formal bit won’t start until 7:30pm and the talk will probably kick off at 8pm. Oh, and as always, PubSci is free!
We hope you can make it!
Posted in Events
Tagged Brixton, Brixton Ritzy, cafe sci, cafe scientifique, Cinema, Darwin, event, geek, Geeks and Nerds, Science, science in the pub, social
For December’s Science In The Pub there will be a science-themed pub quiz hosted by Kash Farooq and James Longstaff. The usual PubSci hosts Paolo and James get a night off – as they will be taking part in the quiz.
And, thanks to our good friends at the British Science Association, there will be some appropriately geeky/sciencey prizes that we will dish out as we see fit!
We suggest that you form teams of 3 or 4 people. Don’t worry if you don’t have have enough people – just turn up. We’re a friendly bunch and we’re sure we can get everyone into a team.
It might also be a good idea to “mix disciplines” when forming a team – each round will have questions from various areas of science. We’ve been busy thinking up questions for a few weeks now and have come up with a fairly wide variety.
To give you a clue of the sort of questions to expect, here are the categories we came up when we were thinking up questions:
See you on Tuesday 6th December from 7:30, upstairs at the Brixton Ritzy!
Posted in Events
Tagged Astronomy, Beer, British Science Association, Brixton, Geeks and Nerds, London, Pub, pubquiz, Pubsci, Quiz, Science, science in the pub, social
A lone worker on a lunar mining base begins to have very odd experiences just as he’s about to return home to Earth. For almost 3 years Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) has been mining Earth’s primary source of energy, Helium-3, for Lunar Industries. But when a routine extraction goes horribly wrong, it becomes increasingly clear that his contract isn’t the only thing that is about to expire.
Duncan Jones’ stunning debut harks back to classic psychological sci-fi films like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Dark Star, not just in terms of the way it looks, but also in the way it forces us to explore issues of loneliness, isolation and our place in the vast cosmic canvas.
After the screening there will be a Q&A with Lewis Dartnell, from the Centre for Planetary Sciences Earth Sciences at University College London, and author of Life in the Universe: A Beginner’s Guide. Lewis will discuss this modern cult classic film, as well as the wider opportunities and concerns of human space exploration and lunar science. So, come join us on Sunday afternoon for a scientific journey into space.
You won’t be alone.
Post written by Simon Frantz, posted by PaoloV
PubSci 