Royal Society Summer Exhibition 2014!

A biologist, a skeleton and the coolest person
ever and another skeleton

I put this week in my diary a few weeks ago, I was determined not to miss the exhibition this year! I didn't get as much free stuff as last time but I think I was just particularly lucky last time... I still learnt lots of things though! And I can't think of a better place to catch up with a nerdy friend. Conveniently my friend is a biologist so I could pretend we only went to the biology exhibits for her - actually being interested in biology would just be embarrassing ;)

One exhibit was about 3D photography. They're developed a flash system that you add on to a normal camera and it quickly takes a series of photos and uses the shadows to create a 3D image. Maybe in a few years I'll be taking my holiday  pictures in 3D? There's more information here, it's interesting because it's so different to 3D techniques currently used.

Next we spoke to a lady about ionic solvents. I was drawn over to the stall about it said that they could be used to reduce CO2 levels in the atmosphere. This is because they can act as a base and so readily absorb acidic CO2. Whats special about ionic solvents is that they are inflammable so we can use them in large quantities without the huge safety risks. They also work at lower temperatures and smaller timescales so have a wide range of applications replacing the many solvents currently used in industry.

We learnt about the antibiotics used by ants and the growing need to develop more antibiotics as bacteria become resistant. We got free stickers and sweets from here too! There were real ants too but just looking at them made me feel all itchy!

The last stall we had time for was the one called 'catch a comet'. An excited physicist explained to use about a 10 year mission to land a spacecraft on a comet. It will collect data about the particles in the comets tail and get a core sample. Actually this blog post should serve as a reminder to check what they've found by the end of August! I got a poster for my wall!