Beakerhead kicks off this week

The University of Calgary is excited to participate in Beakerhead — the Calgary-born smash-up of art, science and engineering — starting this week.

Beakerhead 2019 is happening at several venues around the city Sept. 18-22.

UCalgary in the Community

Throughout Beakerhead, several students, faculty and staff will engage with the community and lead a number of events. At Lunch Without Light, the Dark Table serving staff, who are living with vision loss, are joined by science writer and broadcaster Jay Ingram and Dr. Jaideep Bains, PhD, from the Cumming School of Medicine’s Hotchkiss Brain Institute to lead you in a sensory experience unlike any other.  Guests are invited to learn more about the history and geology of soapstone during Stone Lab, a two-hour carving workshop led by Indigenous artist Priscilla Taylor and hosted by UCalgary’s Arctic Institute of North America. Also among the events are science expert and UCalgary doctoral candidate, Marissa Clapson, who will lead a group through the ins and outs of brewing kombucha, and there’s a chance to explore space at the Rothney Astrophysical Observatory’s Road Trip to the Universe.

Science takeover at the Calgary Central Library

As part of Beakerhead, the Faculty of Science is doing a Science Takeover of the Calgary Central Library on Saturday, Sept. 21.  Whether you are 2 or 102, there’s a world of science and creativity for you to explore in a day filled with hands-on activities and live demonstrations right from our researchers’ labs.

Audiences will be in awe and wonder at how science makes our world work — with the magic of chemistry, the physics of flight and levitation, the wonders of parasites, virtual reality, the power of earthquakes and more. Scientists will explain how to build paper rockets, outrun a dinosaur, and even untangle yourself using math. Check out the full-day schedule online. Best of all, the event is free.

Beakerhead on campus

If you’re looking to engage in Beakerhead on campus, we have the event for you. Campus Collisions erupts in the Taylor Family Digital Library Sept. 18 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. The event features free talks complementing Beakerhead’s focus on art, science and engineering. Learn about community-based action toward sustaining native bee populations, digitizing Alberta’s native bees and pairing custom-built robots driven by generative algorithms with traditional materials and methodologies for building ceramic vessels and structures.

UCalgary discount code

The Spectacle: Saturday, Sept. 21, the event includes UCalgary faculty and staff leading a number of events, such as a cranial castle — where CSM and HBI neuroscientists introduce the public to the brain, through the handling of brain models — and the opportunity to problem-solve your way through a chemistry-themed puzzle box. The Spectacle also features fire-breathing monsters, roaming engineered contraptions, glowing fashion, surprising entertainment, inventions of mammoth proportion, food, drink and more madness. As part of The Spectacle, the Schulich School of Engineering is sponsoring Paraluna, an installation where observers lie beneath a blanket of mesmerizing moving LED lights as they spin and turn, timed to the surrounding speakers in musical perfection.

The UCalgary community can get 20-per-cent off Spectacle tickets when purchasing online and entering promo code UCALGARY19 at checkout. 

Check out all the UCalgary Beakerhead events on our website.