Giant bubbles and fun with magnets

At the weekend, Isla and Andrew did some electrical work fixing a radio and also checking Raa Raa and some lego flowers with the multi-meter. I wonder if Isla will develop her dad and Uncle Peter's skills at taking things apart when she is bigger! Here are the photos of the electricians at work:

The weather was very spring-like at the beginning of this week, with the sun shining. We could go out in the garden for some proper playing. Isla was pleased to start making use of her sand-pit once more:

The cats were very excited to have us join them in the garden. Monty was so happy that he got a fluff-tail chasing Charlie about:

On Wednesday we went to Bristol to the @Bristol Science museum. It is not really a museum, but a very hands-on centre with lots of buttons to press and things to do. I was particularly excited to see some microscopes! There were quite a few exhibits about genes and DNA. There were magnetic nucleotide base pairs to put together to make DNA strands; Isla quite enjoyed playing with the magnets. There was an exhibit comparing the size of the genome of different species and images of the nematode I have worked on were there. Amongst many other things, there was a light you could shine on your wrists to see blood pumping in your veins which I found very cool! There were two zones especially for younger children where they can dress up as dinosaurs or jungle animals.

There were some strong magnets with iron filings to play with:

Our favourite bit was making giant bubbles:

Isla got to wear some funky glasses to look at the emission spectra of different gases:

There were some great exhibits on animation:

Andrew touched a tornado:

Isla spent ages dropping a large magnet down through tubes made of different materials which changed the speed of descent of the magnet depending on their composition:

Isla also like making shapes with sand on rotating discs:

A thermal imaging camera showed the hot and cold bits of our heads:

There was a high-speed camera that recorded us jumping and played it back in slow motion:

Afterwards, we treated ourselves to a delicious meal out at Prezzo's:

....and a walk to the harbourside to see some boats.

That evening, we all had a look at the moon and Jupiter through our telescope. It was the first time Isla had looked through a real telescope (rather than her 'special' kitchen roll tube ones) so it was quite exciting. We could see the four moons of Jupiter almost lining up with each other.