Aha! Challenge

Art meets astrophysics, cocktail chemistry, women’s woo, and wild weather

National Science Week kicks off in Canberra this Saturday – with 75+ events around ACT:

  • Robots, drones, reptiles, performers, expert speakers and food trucks take over The Shine Dome.
  • Sense and sensibility: how pseudoscience helps market wellness woo to women.
  • Physics meets archaeology: how a new chamber was discovered in the Great Pyramid of Khufu.
  • Artists, animators and astronomers present the Universe in four dimensions.
  • Meet the medical inventor behind the cochlear ear and a nutrition scientist using one.
  • Can Canberra adapt to live with drought, wild weather and climate change? Ask an expert panel.
  • A science comedy quiz show that aims to save our species.
  • Art inspired by the rocks, minerals, crystals and fossils of Geoscience Australia.
  • Spot wildlife with your smartphone in the Great Aussie BioQuest.
  • Take the Aha! Challenge and test your brain’s creative insight.

More on these highlights below, and others at www.scienceinpublic.com.au/science-week, and on Twitter at @SciWKMedia.

Scientists, artists, performers and event organisers are available for interview throughout Science Week.

[continue reading…]

National challenge seeks to get inside your head

Researchers set up Australia-wide experiment to explore why and when the pennies drop.

Scientists want to know the things that make you go “aha!”.

Throughout August, researchers from the University of Melbourne are conducting a country-wide citizen science project to better understand how the human brain works.

The focus of the project, dubbed The Aha! Challenge, is to investigate the kind of sudden problem-solving insight that makes you spontaneously exclaim “yes!” or “at last!” or, indeed, “aha!”. It’s the ABC’s community project for National Science Week.

[continue reading…]