• Chemistry magic show
• Planetarium
• Live demonstrations and interactive displays
• Stars and planets show
• Superheroes talk
• Who wants to be a maths millionaire
• Balloon rocket car
• Give-aways and other entertainment

The event will be held in Mallow GAA grounds on Sunday 16 October from 12 noon—3.30pm.

The fair is being run by the National Centre for Excellence in Mathematics Science Teaching and Learning (NCE-MSTL) and the Mathematics Applications Consortium for Science & Industry (MACSI) in association with the Mallow Development Partnership.

For further information contact the NCE-MSTL at 061 234786

Tom Boles has discovered 125 supernovae to date from his private observatory in Suffolk, UK. When he’s not discovering intergalactic beacons, he writes for numerous publications and appears on a number of TV shows, including the BBC’s Sky at Night. He also co-presented Tomorrow’s World, and has been broadcast across a host of radio stations globally.

More information and how to book

This lecture is suitable for the general public, and people of all ages and experience. It will start at 8pm on 12 September in the Physics Department, Fitzgerald Building, Trinity College Dublin.

Tickets for the lecture are  €7, and can be ordered online at www.astronomy.ie or by calling (01) 890 11 11. There will be a social reception afterwards in The Lombard Inn with some complimentary food.

The lecture will also be available on DVD after the event and can be ordered on the Astronomy Ireland website

The conference is a day of lectures, demonstrations and workshops for teachers of physics

The objectives of the conference are to:

• Inform teachers of the exciting and innovative work at the frontiers of Physics
• Provide teachers with examples of simple and inexpensive physics
  demonstrations
• Inform teachers of the latest developments and resources available in physics
  teaching
• Provide an opportunity for teachers to exchange ideas and network

The Registration fee is €35  and this includes lunch

The deadline for registration is Monday 19 September.

For more information and to register visit the Institute of Physics in Ireland or the Galway Mayo Institute website

Artist's impression of NASA's Juno mission

This month’s First Friday at the Blackrock Castle Observatory (BCO) in Cork is going to be a fundraising drive for the Concern Horn of Africa Appeal.

To help everyone get into the charitable and Fiesta spirit, the Castle Café will be offering Paella and a glass of Rioja for only €17.50 – with all profits going towards the Horn of Africa Appeal. This offer will be available throughout Friday.

BCO will also be throwing a Vesta Fiesta as a celebration for NASA’s robotic spacecraft Dawn, which after close to four years cruising at stunning speeds is catching up to the object of its first destination in the main asteroid belt – Vesta.

BCO’s in-house teacher and astronomer Frances McCarthy will be giving four half-hour hands on and family friendly sessions from 6om to 8pm. Then at 8pm she will give a talk on NASA’s Juno, which is a mission of discovery and exploration that will conduct an in-depth study of Jupiter, the most massive planet in our solar system.

Juno’s main goal is to understand the origin and evolution of Jupiter and is scheduled to launch on a five-year trip to Jupiter at 4.34pm on August 5, 2011 from Cape Canaveral.

For more information on all the activities happening at the Castle go to www.bco.ie or call 021 435-7917.

As always it’s a free event for the public.

563 planets around other stars are known to exist. Only a tiny percentage of our galaxy has been searched for new planets, so it is likely that the Milky Way contains millions of exosolar planets.

It’s also likely that many of these planets will be warm enough to support life, and have the right kind of atmosphere to allow life to survive and develop. It is one of these planets that will eventually become a new home to humanity in the future.

At Astronomy Ireland’s Public Lecture on 8 August in Trinity College, top planet hunter Dr Don Pollaco will explore how he searches for exosolar planets around other stars.

Dr Pollaco and his team developed a specialised system called WASP, which consisted of several detectors located at various places around the world. Within the last 10years, they have constructed an even better system called SuperWASP, that has revolutionised the hunt for exosolar planets.

At the lecture, Dr Pollaco will treat the audience to spectacular images taken by exoplanet surveys, and explain how SuperWASP works. He will also explore the idea of the “Goldilocks Zone”, a place not too close to a star, nor too far away: a place where the temperature is just right for life to survive and evolve.

At the lecture, Dr Pollaco will treat the audience to spectacular images taken by exoplanet surveys, and explain how SuperWASP works. He will also explore the idea of the “Goldilocks Zone”, a place not too close to a star, nor too far away: a place where the temperature is just right for life to survive and evolve.”

The lecture takes place in Trinity College Dublin on Monday 8 August  at 8pm. For more information visit www.astronomy.ie.

Robo Eireann's robots in action in Turkey

A  robot soccer team from NUI Maynooth has won a top award in the Robocup 2011 competition in Istanbul.

It’s not the only major success of an Irish student team in an international computing competition this month either. Their counterparts from IT Sligo also took the major honours in the Imagine Cup in New York earlier this month.

The Robo Eireann team from Maynooth were winners in the RoboCup’s “Open Challenge” category, for their research in the field of autonomous systems.

The team consisted of electronic engineering and computer science students and staff from the university.

Dr Seán McLoone, Head of the Department of Electronic Engineering at NUI Maynooth, said: “The RoboCup is an international research initiative aimed at advancing state-of-the-art intelligent autonomous robotics – and it’s an excellent environment for students to showcase their innovative research.”

Learn more

Find out more about Robo Eireann’s work with its humanoid robot soccer players, and visit the team’s Facebook page

Read about Ireland’s victory in the 2011 Imagine Cup

It will look at how  Dublin City of Science can support the science online community, and other ides such as:

• A monthly Irish science online tweet-up
• Projects to do together as an online science community
• Workshops
• An Irish science blog “blender” or aggregator

For more information and to RSVP, check out @dubscience2012 on Twitter or on Facebook.

The 12 to 14-year-olds took part in competitions that tested their analytical chemistry skills. In the morning they were challenged to a game of “Chemical Cluedo” – working in teams to solve the crime of who murdered Captain Salter by using forensic science techniques such as chromatography, and analysing evidence collected from the crime scene.

In the afternoon they took part in the “University Challenge”: using a number of hands-on, practical activities using Bunsen burners and other lab equipment, the students raced to decipher the exact chemical recipe necessary to produce a range of coloured solutions.

Read more about the Salters’ Festival of Chemistry

GBL has captured the interest of researchers, and some educators have already started to embrace this technology.

Although there is a solid body of evidence on the educational effectiveness of GBL, it still needs to gain more recognition among Irish teachers, lecturers, and policy-makers.

For this purpose, a symposium on Game-Based Learning (GBL) will be organised in Waterford Institute of Technology on Thursday 19 May 2011.

The purpose of this symposium is to:

• Report on the use of GBL in Irish primary, secondary and third-level education
• Define the roadmap for GBL in Ireland
• Provide evidence of the effectiveness of GBL to motivate and learn
• Identify how GBL can be included and facilitated in Irish instructional settings.

This symposium will bring together teachers, lecturers, students and researchers, and provide insights from different perspectives such as educational psychology, sociology, Human Computer Interaction (HCI), Artificial Intelligence, Game Design, or Instructional Design. It will also be a great opportunity to network and share ideas with other like-minded researchers and practitioners.

Get more information on the WIT.ie website.

The workshop will give secondary school science teachers practical skills to enhance their teaching of science subjects, and will present innovative and inspiring tools and methods that use space as a means for attracting students to science.

Teachers will participate in a programme of activities that will take them on a voyage through the solar system. They will look at how humans explore space, the science of the Sun, and the study of Earth from space.

The working language of the workshop will be English.

How to apply

A limited amount of financial support for travel cost is available to teachers from EU Member States. Accommodation will be organised and covered by the European Space Agency directly. There is no fee for the workshop.

Places are limited, and the deadline for applications is 5 June 2011.

Find out more about funding and how to apply