I don’t want to spoil the story for you, but it isn’t giving too much
away to let you know that the story is about a search for a meteorite that
has fallen on Scotland, which gives an excuse for lots of conversation about
where meteors come from and the nature of the Solar System.

Strangely, though, you don’t notice that you are being taught anything
at all. The play is very enjoyable entertainment, with catchy tunes as well
as corny jokes. It only lasts for about an hour and a half, with an interval,
so there’s not much time for even small children to become bored. During
the interval I overheard one boy, who looked about eight years old, telling
his friend that ‘it’s not bad so far’. I reckon this is pretty high praise.

There are four characters in the play: Doug Thuggery, who wants to be
a star and is a nasty piece of work; Mum, Doug’s mother, who is obsessed
with spectacles and mirrors and is sure that Doug has ‘a heart of gold’;
Stella, a young and attractive astronomer (a piece of characterisation that
shows that not all the astronomers are like Patrick Moore); and Jimmy, who
helps Stella in their search.

The set for this play is clever. It is a carousel. As it moves around
it reveals in turn four or five separate sets.

I also thought the music, written by Dominic Barlow, was catchy, which,
embarrassingly, meant that when I was at home and walking around after the
show I kept on singing, badly and loudly, ‘It’s all in the staaaaaaars’.

The Molecule Theatre also provides some project notes for teachers and
a programme for the children. These sheets contain scientific information,
and the teachers’ one tells you how to make a telescope as a class project.
Both will undoubtedly prove useful to a school party.

All in all, I thought this was very good, and more of a pantomime than
a scientific play. It is definitely a credit to Nigel Henbest and Michael
Bennett, who wrote it, and everyone else who took part. Jolly good for its
recommended age group, and indeed for anyone older who likes a panto and
doesn’t mind being told some science they already know.

On tour for a week each at Bangor (6 Nov), Lincoln (13 Nov), Bridgend
(20 Nov), London (27 Nov), Canterbury (16 Jan), Frome (22 Jan), Birmingham
(29 Jan), Chesham (6 and 12 Feb), Malvern (27 Feb), Sevenoaks (5 March),
Whitehaven (12 March), Oldham (20 March), Derby (27 March) and Edinburgh
(9 April). For further information contact the Molecule Theatre, Bloomsbury
Theatre, 15 Gordon Street, London WC₁H 0AH. Tel: 01-388 5739.

Ben Gribbin is a student at Priory Upper School, Lewes, Sussex.

One very useful thing about these exhibits is that beside each one is
a notice explaining what the names mean. From the exhibition I learned quite
a bit of Greek. For instance, dimetrodon means two size teeth.

As you walk on you will find a halfscale apatosaurus and its baby (cute!),
a static model, but nonetheless impressive, of a pteranodon hanging from
the roof, a dimetrodon, a stegosaurus and its baby, a triceratops and its
baby (my favourites) and a tyrannosaurus, which is half-scale but still
impressive. They all move their heads very realistically, and some move
their tails or paw the ground but, of course, they don’t actually run around
the museum. They do growl and gnash their teeth at you. On the way out you
can operate the controls of a cutaway model of a dinosaur, moving its head,
tail and feet to see how the models work. The problem was that at any one
time when I was there about 10 people wanted to go on it, so it would have
been useful to have two models to play with.

After leaving the moving dinosaurs, there was a full-scale tyrannosaurus
leg, which was enormous, an exhibit of dinosaur memorabilia, and a shop
selling dinosaur souvenirs. The fee for a visit to the dinosaurs is Pounds
sterling 2.50 full rate, and Pounds sterling 1.25 for children, students,
old-age pensioners and holders of UB40s. The living dinosaurs themselves
only take about an hour to enjoy, so that sounds a lot. But remember that
you can see the rest of the museum, including the really good Creepy Crawly
exhibit, and the Geological Museum with its simulated earthquake.

Basically, I thought that Dinosaurs Live was very good; but one word
of warning, don’t bring very young children as they could get frightened
– while I was there, one toddler had to be carried out in tears.

*Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD.

Ben Gribbin is a dinosaur fan and a Sussex schoolboy.

The wonder is that nobody thought to do it before. However, it is appropriate
that the idea should surface in Scotland, home of James Clerk Maxwell, and
a country where education is still taken seriously. Education is, in fact,
only part of the story. The thinking behind the festival is that science
is a part of daily life, and ought to be celebrated in the same way that
we celebrate good books or theatre.

We wouldn’t want you to run away with the impression that it was all
fun and games. There were plenty of serious talks, discussions and presentations
on topics such as (you’ve guessed) the greenhouse effect and genetic engineering.
But we visited Edinburgh for a long weekend simply to enjoy the science,
and, while we studiously avoided anything too serious, we still found it
impossible to cram in everything we wanted to see and do.

This was the most important achievement of the festival and the one
which points the way ahead for science festivals in Edinburgh and elsewhere.
People do not, by and large, go to the other Edinburgh Festival to be educated.
They go to have a good time. Science has for too long been stuck with the
image of being good for you, but not much fun. If science festivals can
shatter that myth, they will be doing more to ensure the future of science
in Britain than any number of serious lectures on the ozone hole.

Our entertainment came from comfortably familiar sources and from new
and unexpected directions. The Discovery Dome, perched in the Botanic Gardens,
was a bit of both. It is a travelling version of the kind of ‘hands on’
science exhibition familiar from Bristol’s Exploratory and the Science Museum’s
Launch Pad. ‘Mobile’, we thought, must mean ‘inferior’. If anything, it
was better: the tents housing the exhibition made it more circussy; almost
all the exhibits were in working order; and there were some new items (to
us), including a hypnotically obsessive rotating disc filled with viscous
fluid and revealing patterns of smooth and turbulent flow.

That wasn’t the only surprise. We made what we thought would be a duty
call on a primary science fair, prepared to look condescendingly at the
work of our juniors. We found that 40 schools had constructed exhibits.
Not only were the exhibits themselves impressive and interesting, for example,
a working model of a swing-bridge; but Linlithgow Primary School, several
steps ahead of the national media, had produced a special edition of a newspaper,
Primary Press, reporting the event. And, sitting in on a science quiz involving
secondary schools, we were delighted to be plunged into the midst of a scientific
controversy.

What, the teams were asked, is the origin of the word ‘nylon’? Two of
the four competing schools in the final round of the competition (nail-biting
stuff, with the scores nearly level) gave the right answer; or, at least,
the one which satisfied the quizmaster. It is, they claimed, an anagram
formed from the initial letters of New York and the first part of London,
commemorating the joint development of nylon by researchers in the US and
Britain.

Up popped a senior member of the audience to dispute this. According
to his version, the original plan of the inventor was to christen the new
fibre ‘nulon’. When it was discovered that the name had already been registered,
it was changed as little as possible, replacing the ‘u’ with a ‘y’.

After much debate, the ‘NY-LON’ version was agreed to be correct for
the purposes of the quiz, with a plea for further information from anyone
who has it. We’d be as interested as the organisers to know the full story!
The perspicacity of the organisers was clearly demonstrated at our last
‘official’ port of call, the Science Book Fair, held in the Albert Thompson
Hall of Heriot-Watt University. Instead of simply filling the place with
boring but worthy scientific tomes, the festival had found room for an exhibition
on space and a section devoted to science fiction; ‘Space and science fiction’
was, indeed, a theme for a series of talks and workshops linked to the book
fair. And the appropriateness of Edinburgh as a venue for such a festival
was confirmed by another surprise. Our highest highlight was a visit to
a ‘show’ not officially part of the festival: the camera obscura at the
top of the Royal Mile. You can get the lectures anywhere; we get them every
year at the BA. But a combination of interesting talks plus hands on science,
science-fiction books and a camera obscura? Only in Edinburgh! Now that
the idea is a proven success, we can hope that the Edinburgh Science Festival
will go from strength to strength; and maybe that other cities might be
encouraged to emulate it. After all, there are rumoured to be other festivals
of the arts!

John Gribbin is one of New ÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´â€™s consultants. Ben is his 12-year-old
son.