Skip to main content
Education and outreach

Education and outreach

Building a science centre that will inspire local communities, musing over first lines in science books

11 Aug 2022 Hamish Johnston

Many physicists are keen to share their enthusiasm for science with the public, and this often involves participating in events at different venues across a community. In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, we meet four people in the Canadian city of Guelph who believe that their community’s appetite for science is so great that it warrants a dedicated science centre.

All four are all members of Royal City Science, which was founded in 2020 with the aim of building a science centre in Guelph. They are Joanne O’Meara and Orbax, both physicists at the University of Guelph; Kate Howells of the Planetary Society; and the business executive George Staikos.

The Guelph quartet talk about their outreach activities – including a popular series of activities at local breweries – and about the challenges of raising awareness and funding for their ambitious project.

Also in this week’s episode, Physics World’s Sarah Tesh and Matin Durrani talk about our latest quiz, which looks at the opening lines of famous physics-related popular science books. You can take the quiz at “The first-sentence challenge”.

Copyright © 2024 by IOP Publishing Ltd and individual contributors