MORE than 1,000 youngsters from across York and North Yorkshire are converging on the National Railway Museum (NRM) for the city’s science and technology fair.

About 1,200 key stage two pupils from 34 primary schools were due to attend the National Railway Museum’s Discovery Days, which began yesterday and continued today, as part of the celebration of all things technological.

The seven to 11-year-olds were to take part in a range of interactive workshops on subjects including creepy crawlies, food, making energy from waste, chemistry, plant genetics and credit card torches.

Tomorrow will be Discovery Days Family Day, with drop-in sessions at the NRM and other events across the city centre as part of Science In The City, including NYBEP’s family marshmallow catapult challenge.

Meanwhile, unconventional scientists Dr Ken Curious and Frank Einstein will visit the York Designer Outlet on Sunday with their “suitcase of science”.

As part of York Festival of Science and Technology, which runs until March 20, the wacky professors will give interactive scientific demonstrations of everyday items such as plungers and bullwhips to show shoppers the smallest planetarium, strange egg gravity, five-ball juggling and the world record for straws in a man’s hair.

The Space Connections Wow Space Bus, supported by the Yorkshire Branch of the Institute of Physics, will also be pulling up at the centre, offering shoppers the opportunity to experience zero gravity.

Visit scy.co.uk for the full festival programme.


Some of festival’s opening events

Today

• Festival launch with the Gadget Show’s Ortis Deley and Pollyanna Woodward, Ron Cooke Hub, University of York, 7.30pm to 9pm, boxoffice.yorkminster.org.

• British Heart Foundation: Mending Broken Hearts, City Screen Picturehouse, 9am to 5pm bhf.org.uk/mbh.

• Public Lecture: The Science of Fusion, National Science Learning Centre, University of York, 7pm to 9pm, york.ac.uk.

• Astronomy at Bootham School Observatory, 7.30pm to 9.30pm, boothamschool.com.

Tomorrow:

• What are you on about? Yorkshire Museum, 7.30pm to 8.45pm boxoffice.yorkminster.org.

Sunday

• Lambing Sunday, Askham Bryan College, 10am to 4pm askham-bryan.ac.uk.

• Yorkshire Philosophical Society: The Science of Music, Yorkshire Museum, 2.30pm to 3.30pm, yorksphilsoc.org.uk.

• Dissections Uncut! University of York, 7.30pm to 8.30pm, boxoffice.yorkminster.org.