Senior lecturer Lodovica Illari, aided by grad. students Ryan Abernathey and Dan Chavas were among many local scientists who participated at Saturday, May 7th's "Science Carnival", an all day event held at the Cambridge Public Library as part of this year's Cambridge Science Festival.
Illari, Abernathey and Chavas demonstrated live laboratory experiments using rotating tanks of water, dyes and ice buckets to illustrate how weather systems are formed and climate operates.
Illari described the event as "great fun, but a lot of work!". Weather-in-a-Tank is reported to have pulled a big crowd and competed very well with other events, even though sandwiched in between the "Optical Demonstrations" of The England Optical Society and the, Akamai sponsored, Robotics Demonstration of the FIRST Technology Challenge (FTC), a robotics competition for high-school students.
As always the interest of adults and kids was very rewarding. Although possibly apocryphal, one ten year old may even have been overheard saying to his mom: "No, can we stay? They are demonstrating the Coriolis Force!"