Brought to you by Chris Hamlett.

Discover Materials Busking Box

Our Discover Materials busking boxes are large toolboxes on wheels that can be easily moved around to events and contain loads of fantastic materials science –based demonstrations.

Here are some of the demonstrations that they contain:

Materials Bars

The box contain rods (~30cm long) of different materials (metals, plastics and even composites)  that our ambassadors can use to demonstrates a range of material properties such as density, thermal conductivity and even chemical properties of materials.

Smart materials

Smart materials are materials that respond to an external stimulus in a controlled way. The busking box contains a range of these awesome materials such as shape memory alloys, ferrofluids and photochromic materials.

Learning from Nature

The busking box contains a lotus leaf, water repellent fabric and magic sand allowing our ambassadors to discuss how we can be inspired by the awesome surfaces designed by Nature to engineer surfaces such as self-cleaning fabrics.

Other busking favourites

We have other, smaller busks to demonstrate materials such as hydrogels and the structure of polymers (the balloon kebab).

Look out for our busking box at or events and, if you have ideas for other small, awesome busks, then please let us know.