10:00am-4:00pm on Saturday 16 March

Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, Lensfield Road, CB2 1EW

Visit the Department of Chemistry to try some hands-on chemistry experiments and enter a world of science. Once kitted out in a lab coat and safety goggles, you will be ready to go! Our researchers and students will guide you through our family-friendly activities, with the emphasis on you having a go and making discoveries for yourself.

Booking for the Open Day lectures is now open and this year we are offering two lectures. A demonstration lecture 'Just Add Water' by Professor Peter Wothers which explores the remarkable properties of this familiar liquid, while Professor Erwin Reisner will look at the latest technologies for the production of sustainable fuels and chemicals from air, water and waste powered by sunlight in his lecture 'Capturing Sunlight for a Sustainable Future'.

5:00pm-6:15pm on Friday 22 March

BMS Lecture Theatre, Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, Lensfield Road, CB2 1EW

Professor Dr Marta E. G. Mosquera, University of Alcala. 

'Bioplastics for a sustainable future'

For Humankind, materials have defined Ages, there was the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age…. These days plastics are the key materials for developing our technology and our standard of life. Is it possible to do without them? Which are the alternatives? In this talk we will discuss about how to make plastics more sustainable, the “elephant in the room”.

This lecture, in memory of chemist Alex Hopkins, will be accessible to a non-specialist audience and as much about educating as entertaining.
Find out more about the Alex Hopkins Lecture here.

12:00pm-4:00pm on Saturday 23 March

Centre for Mathematical Sciences, Wilberforce Road, CB3 0WA

Cambridge mathematicians work on everything from number theory to the Big Bang, using maths to tackle problems ranging from climate change to modelling the spread of pandemics.

Join staff and students from the Faculty of Mathematics for hands-on activities, demonstrations and pop-up explorations to discover more!

More details are available here.

11:00am-12:00pm on Saturday 23 March

Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences, 20 Clarkson Road, CB3 0EH

Professor Ben Allanach, Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge

'The Force Awakens: Quantum Collisions'

Large Hadron Collider experiments at CERN have discovered the Higgs boson, the final missing piece of the Standard Model of particle physics. In this highly interactive talk, Professor Ben Allanach will describe how the accelerator and its experiments work generally, and also give more specific details about the discovery of the Higgs boson. Based on this information, he will then help the audience to understand the Standard Model, a highly successful quantum field theory.

... Recently though, other experiments in America have brought the Standard Model into question through the possible signs of a new quantum force...

11:00am-3:00pm on Saturday 23 March

Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences, Downing Street, CB2 3EQ

Come and meet the scientists of the University of Cambridge Department of Earth Sciences, renowned for its world-class research, and their co-workers from other university departments. Explore what it's like to research fossils, earthquakes, the structure of the Earth or tackle environmental challenges by taking part in our hands-on activities.

Find out more about the activities here.