Our Planet - Our Future

"Our Planet - Our Future" is the annual schools and colleges lecture for 2005 from the Institute of Physics. The lecture looked at the ways in which science and technology are helping us to understand the impact that human life has had on the planet.

Exciting demonstrations were used to bring the material to life and the audience became involved in deciding the content of the lecture through use of an interactive choose-your-own-lecture format.

Our Planet - Our Future toured the country and reached over 10,000 students this year. The hour long talk is linked to the national curriculum and aimed at 11-16 year old science and technology students.

2006 sees a new touring schools lecture 'Gravity, Gas and Stardust' which looks at answering the questions: How and when did our universe begin? What made it look like this? How will it end?

Gravity, Gas and Stardust will take the audience on a journey through the cosmos, exploring some of the latest results from the world of astronomy and what they reveal regarding the birth, life and death of our universe.

The show will include demonstrations, hands-on activities and 3D movie clips to uncover the evidence for the birth of the universe in a Big Bang. It will explore its structure and show how, using supercomputers, cosmologists can predict the fate of the cosmos.

For more information on the Institute of Physics schools lectures see the Teaching Physics website.