Raise a Beaker to Seattle’s First Science Fest
Seattle's first ever science festival brings a plethora of nerdy topics and the one-and-only Stephen
By Seattle Mag May 21, 2012
This article originally appeared in the June 2012 issue of Seattle magazine.
Organized by the Pacific Science Center and timed to coincide with the Seattle Center’s Next 50 celebration, the first-annual Seattle Science Festival features a galaxy of family-friendly festivities.
Science Expo Day (6/2) kicks things off with a big bang. Taking place across the Seattle Center grounds, this free event features more than 150 happenings: exhibits, demos, hands-on experiments, games and live performances by science-loving musicians and performance troupes.
Happening throughout June, the Science Luminaries Series offers a series of lectures on different themes from hackers, evolutionary scientists, rocket scientists and gaming gurus. No joke, the lecture series features the king of science himself: Stephen Hawking. The world’s most famous physicist will join renowned palaeontologist Dr. Jack Horner and biologist Dr. Leroy Hood to discuss evolution at the Paramount Theater (June 16, 8 p.m. Ticket prices vary).
Festival Week (6/3–6/10) includes a huge range of science-centric activities across the city, including the Seattle Mini Maker Faire (6/2–6/3), where makers of robots, tools, games and weird stuff you never imagined gather and show off their inventions; Physics Made Alive (6/4), during which the University of Washington’s Department of Physics will demo fascinating items, including a monkey gun, a rocket wagon, an astro-blaster, the 55-gallon-drum crusher, antigravity magnets and an artificial rainbow; “Better Science Through Chocolate” tours at Theo Chocolate (6/4–6/5); and the Seattle middle school science fair (6/7), during which local students reveal their brave new ideas at the Museum of Flight.
Times, prices and locations vary. seattlesciencefestival.org
This article has been edited since its original publication.
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