The Beauty of xkcd

I'm going to start this post by saying I'm not a regular reader of the xkcd comic strip (a humorous stick figure comic strip about science, technology and maths). 

But I have friends who love it, and post some of the hi-lights on their Facebook/Twitter streams. It was in that way that last week I stumbled across the below. Which obviously had to be posted here (click on the image to visit it on the xkcd website). 

Science Busking for Science Week

Rita Tojeiro from ICG. 

As part of Science Week festitivites at Portsmouth, I helped with Science Busking in the main local shopping street (Commercial Road) last Wednesday.

It was written about in the local paper: "Scientists Busk It". Rita hates the picture they took (right), so I hope she'll forgive me for including it. I think she looks very nice, and it shows off the lovely electric motor she made for the event. Also in the linked article I want to point out that they got the science slightly wrong -- as the person in the comments correctly says, we were pumping air out of the wine bottle to make the marshmallows expand. My job was sticking the skewer into balloons, which I then gave out to kids.


The Portsmouth University Creative and Cultural Industries Department feaured the event in their weekly news bulletin, avalailable on Vimeo:

06. CCi Live_18-03-11 from CCi Live on Vimeo.