Big Bang 2024 – Geckos and beyond!

Over three days in June 48 volunteers from across the Discover Materials Community (from metallurgy professors to 1st year undergraduates) helped to inspire the 21 000 visitors to the Big Bang Fair at the NEC (Birmingham).

We worked with Royce to put together a large stand at which visitors could use microscopes (kindly lent to us by Zeiss) to investigate some fantastic surfaces developed by Nature from the incredible iridescent Morpho butterfly to the hooked barbs of plants, such as burdock, that are used to attach to furry animals to aid their dispersal. Having learned about some of Nature’s awesome surfaces visitors could then use 3D printing pens to draw out their very own versions of the plants and creatures that have inspired both scientists and designers alike.

Having observed, investigated and made objects visitors could then test materials using our outreach tensile testers, measure the rebound height of sports balls and even use UV colour changing beads (and a UV torch) to investigate which materials would be good to use to make a visor for space helmets.

Also, we had Dan Scotson’ s fantastic ‘porosity’ activity returned to the Big Bang for a second year running and it was wonderful to see how other ambassadors and academics delivered the activity.

We spoke to a great number of awesome teachers, school pupils, other stand holders and |Freya (one of our fantastic ambassadors) even made a special visit to the ZooLab stand to chat to Ecko the Gecko – check out her video HERE