Imperial College Science Showcase!

Looking after our lovely audience and cheerleading our performers for the night is Dr Suze Kundu, former academic in the Department of Materials at Imperial College, and now Head of Public Engagement at Digital Science, sponsors for tonight's shenanigans. Suze loves shoes, Muse and booze. Luckily she is able to showcase some of the science behind at least one of those things. Join us and discover the mindblowing fluid dynamics of a perfectly poured pint of Guinness, and learn how to astound your dinner party guests by sciencing the difference between a shaken martini and a stirred one!

Alfredo is a certified doctor of the stars and master of the quirky world of the quantum, he studied both at Imperial College. He's a self-confessed astroholic, so he’d happily talk your ear off about anything and everything astronomy. Anything from galaxies to asteroids, and Pluto to pulsars, you should send his way. He lives in London with his husband and he chairs Pride in STEM, a charitable trust that aims to showcase and support LGBTQ+ people in STEM.

This evening, he will challenge us to think about how pop music can be used as a fun (and sometimes prophetic) tool to talk about physics.

DINOSAURS! VOLCANOES! EARTHQUAKES! I will be talking about none of these things. Geology isn't always all it's cracked up to be. Ever wondered what it's really like to study the world's least sexy science? Then this is your lucky night! I'll be taking you on a tour of the lighter side of life on the rocks... Expect groan-worthy puns, some nerdy science bits, and questionable life choices.

Our sun, is a dynamic living star, just like many others in the night’s sky. However, with our close proximity we can study it in amazing detail but are also affected by its frequent changes and temperamental outbursts such as with solar flares. We’ll be looking inside the star, looking at what powers it and how we made these discoveries, out through its surface and on towards Earth, looking at how even the minutest changes, can have huge impacts for life on Earth.

You may not realise it, but we are all very good at communicating with each other without saying a word. From body language and hand gestures to signs posts and emojis we can get a huge amount of information from non-verbal language - so why should science be any different? Neil Dufton thinks that we can replace complicated scientific language and terminology with signs, symbols and emojis as a creative, open and accessible way for everyone to have a scientific conversation. Join in with a science emoji pub quiz and see how much more biology you know!

The heart and lungs work tirelessly night and day to keep us alive. They’re often working solidly in the background and it’s easy to take them for granted. These organs are clever and react rapidly to changes in the body. This event will give you a chance to learn how your senses (touch, sight, hearing, taste and smell) to engage with these organs in ways you might never have done. We’ll also answer important questions like ‘why can’t you hold your breath to death’ and ‘can I get a longer snorkel?’. Pub quiz knowledge and party tricks ahead!

I can safely say that, until this point in time, you will probably not have given lichen a single thought. You’ve undoubtedly walked past thousands of them and never even noticed… As a self-confessed super-fan of this understated yet totally awesome symbiotic organism, I will enlighten you as to just how amazing this plant/fungi mash-up truly is. You will learn that moss and lichen are NOT the same thing and you will never be able to walk past a brick wall or tree trunk again without pausing to marvel at Nature’s very own Banksy.

Daniel is CEO of Digital Science - a company that tries to help researchers (and research in general) achieve more by creating helpful, usable and lovable software. Quantum Physics is considered mysterious to many but is actually extremely accessible. Following a successful series of lectures of the same title in 2015, in which I compress a semester of advanced quantum theory into 1 hour, I will condense the same material into just 10 minutes...without simply speaking more quickly!