“It’s not rocket science” – a professor folding his own paper shuttle.
The Open Day came to a close at four yesterday, and the fact I’ve left it till today to write it up shows how tiring it was. After 11am it became a lot busier. The Aibos were popular with younger children. If you’ve not heard of an Aibo, it’s the robot dog I mentioned in the last post. It’s a programmable robot. I couldn’t get any video of them, as there were always at least three kids playing with them, but the video below, from YouTube, shows what they do when they’re set to ‘cute’
We also had a few people playing with our computer planetaria, possibly because the real one was booked solid within about a quarter of an hour. Our Lego Mars Rover did a fine impression of Beagle2 for much of the day. I know Beagle2 wasn’t built to move, but neither did our rover for quite a while. It works perfectly until someone points a camera at it, so I’m wondering if we got it second hand from “Tomorrow’s World”.
But despite the failure to explore a lot of Mars, on the whole the Open Day was a success. Many people left with their own shuttle including our own head of department. There’s something slightly surreal about watch an astrophysicist fold his own paper spaceship.
Posted by Alun 
