This years Science festival runs from 12 - 25 March with the theme 'Breaking Boundaries' to tie in with the Olympic and Paralympic Games. The event promises to be the biggest yet, with over 180 mostly free events taking place at venues across Cambridge. Anglia will again be an associate sponsor of the festival, and our Faculty of Science & Technology will be taking over the Guildhall as part of the first 'Science on Saturday' event on Saturday 17 March.

Academics and students from our faculty will be running as series of free, fun, hands-on, drop-in activities for all ages between 10am and 4pm on the day, which include:

Is there an alien in your garden?
There are more ladybird species in your garden than you probably realise - Britain has 26 species! One of them is an alien species - but can you tell which? Learn about the ecology and identification of these fascinating beetles...and how to carry out a ladybird survey.

Crime scene science
Learn all about the science vital to scenes of crime investigation and get your hands dirty trying forensic techniques such as fingerprinting, bone excavation, scene of crime preparation and photography, and find out how scientists detect fake banknotes.

Journey to the centre of the eye and ear
Have a play with the latest computerised equipment used to see inside the eye in 3-D and take a journey into the ear. Test how good your 3-D vision is. Learn how the eyes and ears work. Challenge the limit of your colour vision - what colour do you see?

In the arts & craft corner, the younger scientists can personalise their own spectacles frames.

Meet the creepy crawlies!
Have you ever handled a giant millipede or seen a cockroach hiss? We have a selection of creepy crawlies which you can see, handle and interact with to investigate how they move...on you! You can meet the Giant African Land Snails, Giant African Millipedes as well as the Madagascan Hissing Cockroaches! They're safe and fun to handle for all ages.

Can we really believe what we see?
Visual illusions are not only fun to look at, but can also tell us a great deal about how the brain works. Some illusions create images that aren't really there (e.g., colour aftereffects and Hermann Grids), others simply confuse the visual system (e.g., the Ames Room).

Making sense of a situation involves the perception and comprehension of a vast amount of information. Humans try and make sense of a situation as quickly as possible to get a sense of what is going on. Only when we concentrate on specific features in more detail do we identify specific inconsistencies . This Eye tracker task involves looking at images and assessing what information our eyes are attending to and how long it takes us to notice apparent differences.

Have you got what it takes to be an Olympian?
Sheeting power: Want to experience the demands of being an Olympic Sailor? This test assesses how well you can 'sheet'. This is the technique of pulling on the ropes and controlling the sails. Have a go and compare your scores to athletes competing in the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Cycling power: Experience the demands of track cycling. This test is designed to see how much instantaneous power you can produce. How quickly can you get the cycle up to race speed? Compare your scores with Olympians and Para Olympians.

Feeling flexible: Have a go at a test that is used with gymnasts, designed to assess how flexible your lower back and legs are by removing the advantages gained from having different limb lengths. Compare your scores to those of Olympic athletes.

Reactive strength: This test assess the ability of your muscles to act like a spring and generate instantaneous power through the functioning of the central nervous system and is used in the assessment of tennis through to middle distance running performance. Jump as high and as rapidly as possible. Compare you score with Olympic and Paralympic athletes.

Animal and human locomotion: measuring stride length and range of motion
Measure your walk stride length or elbow joint range of motion by using a video camera and computer software. You can compare these to a horse or a dog with footage previously captured. Or, guess how fast different animals move with our interactive quiz!

On Monday 19th March (7.30pm - 8.30pm, LAB002) Dr Aled Jones, Director of the Global Sustainability Institute, will be giving a lecture entitled "Resource constraints, ecomomic growth and the future of society".

And on Wednesday 21st March (7.30pm - 8.30pm, LAB002) Dan Gordon, Principle Lecturer in Sports Science and former Paralympic athlete will be giving a lecture entitled "The final push: Preparing an athlete for an Olympic or Paralympic Games".

These talks are free to attend but have a limited capacity so places will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.