Warwick Christmas Lectures are a festive hit

This year’s Warwick Christmas Lectures were a success, with both events being sold out well in advance.

Despite the Warwick Arts Centre currently being under renovation, the annual Christmas Lectures carried on and were held in the Butterworth Hall, with over 1,500 attendees in each.

Pop, Fizz and Bang, the first Christmas lecture, was held on Monday 27 November alongside the Faculty of Science. The interactive lecture detonated over 1,000 ping pongs using liquid nitrogen.

The second lecture, entitled ‘Red and yellow and pink and green…’, took place on Monday 4 December. It used fireworks and explosions to explore whether everyone sees the same colour as each other.

Both events cost £3.50 per person but were free for schoolchildren.

Ally Caldercote, the organiser of the event from the Physics Outreach Group, said: “It’s so important to share the knowledge and enthusiasm that we have within the science faculty at Warwick. I am privileged to be surrounded by some of the world’s finest minds”.

“I want to share with the public some of the awesome work that gets done here because it is mind bogglingly brilliant, and because it is a lot of fun.”

Although the lectures are usually aimed at children, Warwick students are invited to take part in them too. Nikita Channa, a second year Physics student, said that: “It was aimed out towards kids, so was easy for non-scientists to follow, but it was interactive and fun for them to watch.”

“It was explaining how Santa needs energy to go around the world in one night, so there were experiments showing how energy is released in food, how energy can be used to make things fall upwards and how straining energy can cause a ping pong ball explosion.”

The Christmas Lectures have been a tradition at Warwick for numerous years, and are a collaboration between the Physics department and the Arts Centre.

Other Christmas events to be held at the Arts Centre during the festive season include a Campus Bear Hunt, carols by the Warwick Chamber Choir and a West End hit We’re Going on a Bear Hunt.