12TH SCIENCE PICNIC
OF POLISH RADIO AND THE COPERNICUS SCIENCE CENTRE

On Saturday, 14 June, the twelfth edition of the Science Picnic of Polish Radio and the Copernicus Science Centre will be held in Warsaw's New Town Square and Podzamcze park area. This year's main theme will be "Learn the Language of Science."

Like every year, there are many attractions in store for visitors to this year's "Science Picnic": nearly 1000 interesting and interactive demonstrations and presentations from around the world, portraying a variety of scientific issues. In 210 tents, 200 institutions from 18 countries will be represented, including Poland, Belgium, China, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Mexico, Portugal, Slovenia, Switzerland, the US and UK. This year's special guest will be Finland.

For the first time, this year two large demonstration stages will host outstanding scientists – a main stage on New Town Square and a second in Podzamcze. The 12th Science Picnic's star presenters and popular-science promoters will include: Bob Friedhoffer, professor at the City University of New York's Center for Advanced Study in Education, invited in by the US Embassy, the British Tom Pringle, better known around the world as Dr. Bunhead, and Harri Montonen (Heko) from the Heureka Science Centre in Finland. Music for the event will be provided by the group Masala Soundsystem, to play on the main stage.

The tent village covering 40 000 m2 will offer visitors many interesting demonstrations and hands-on experiments to try out, enabling them to:
• see how a nuclear power station is built in 50 months,
• prove whether the Earth spins to the right or the left,
• find out how comets are born,
• measure the movement of a body in space,
• discover the secrets of King Jan III Sobieski's kitchen,
• learn how a pair of "beer goggles" work,
• build an electric motor,
• peek into the intimate lives of spiders,
• watch a robot imitate the movement of a lizard,
• find out what frogs have in common with earthquakes,
• see differences in temperature,
• discover a cybernetic hand model,
• sit behind the controls of a plane and helicopter,
• observe solar prominences and sunspots,
• test their own DNA,
• touch off a private earthquake,
• pay a visit to the LHC village, studying nuclear physics at the CERN centre in Switzerland.