Take part in our Big Science Event at Home!

Ever wondered ‘why?’ ‘how?’ or ‘what if …?’  Follow your curiosity and take part in our Big Science Event at Home this summer.

All you need to do is come up with a question that you really want to find the answer to, design and carry out an investigation that might help you to answer it and share what you discover with us. With lots of families with young children at home, the aim of the event is to celebrate our curiosity and creativity and have fun with science.

Your investigation can be on any topic – Which soap is the best one to use when you have to wash your hands a lot? Which bag for life is the strongest? Which ice cream melts the quickest? What type of seed grows the fastest? Which garden bird sings the loudest? Or Are bigger snails faster than small ones? What you choose to investigate is completely up to you!

The Big Science Event at Home is open to all ages. You can work on your own or with your family, with a friend via Zoom or as part of a group at school. All you need to do is share what you did and what you found out. This can be in any format that you like – a short film, photo diary, poster, or a short report. All entries must be sent to us by 13^th July. Our panel of friendly science-loving judges – including Renee Watson from The Curiosity Box and Sarah Bearchell from Sarah’s Adventures in Science – will look at all the entries and select a variety of winners of all ages, celebrating a wide range of skills from novel experiments to careful measurement and great teamwork.

Thanks to our sponsors, we have lots of fantastic prizes to give away – including £500 worth of Playforce equipment for the winner’s school; subscriptions to The Curiosity Box sponsored by Abbott; and tickets to the Science Oxford Centre in Headington, Oxford, when it reopens.

Lockdown has severely impacted children’s access to experiential learning by taking them out of the classroom and removing access to clubs and activities. Parents are now taking a larger role in how their children learn and supporting and extending what teachers are providing on-line. During this period Science Oxford continues to support families and teachers in school with opportunities for science learning – that’s why we’ve launched the Big Science Event at Home. We hope that it will give children the opportunity to learn about scientific enquiry and see science as something creative and fun.

We have lots of online resources and tips to help you get started.
Find out more here. We look forward to seeing the results of your investigations!

The Big Science Event at Home competition is based on the popular Big Science Event at School that Science Oxford has been running since 2009. The event has been generously grant funded by the Evolution Education Trust and supported by Diamond Light Source, Abbott, Playforce and The Curiosity Box.