The Imaginary Paddington 2 Science Festival

Following on from my Imaginary Maritime Science Festival (full of good ideas even if I say so myself) I have begun thinking about the science in Paddington 2 and what my imaginary science festival based on it might look like. Pretty good actually. Give my (slightly stretched) links between the film and science listed below a hard stare and see what you think.

1. Andean spectacled bears 
2. Oranges...
3. ...and marmalade
4. Botanical art
5. 3D representations: Origami
   
6. 3D representations: rendering of images in computers
7. Robotics
8. Facial recognition technology
9. Steam trains
   

1. Andean spectacled bears
Paddington's look is based on a real bear, Tremarctos ornatus (spectacled bear) - they're rather cute. I think there could be a lecture about their lifestyle and habitat, conservation efforts and so on, and relationship with other types of bear.

2. Oranges...
In 2007 I spent a happy fortnight at the University of Leiden studying on their Economic Botany course (ethnobotany with a particular focus on how humans use plants). Much like dogs plants are bred for all sorts of reasons and when it comes to fruits it's things like flavour and peelability. The citrus family is full of created fruits with a long lineage from ancestral forms of deliciousness. While studying there I managed to get to eat a few of the more unusual ones (it was a wonderful and fascinating course, led by David Mabberley).

3. ..and marmalade
Plenty of science in marmalade making - role of pectin, extractions and filtering, flavour molecules, sterilisation of glass bottles etc. Perhaps there could be a workshop in which everyone gets to go through the process of making marmalade and then takes home a jar of marmalade. Depending on how long the process takes that bit may involve pre-made marmalade.

4. Botanical art
This would possibly fall in the Arts & Crafts section of the festival (which, by the way, is interdisciplinary) as this obviously involves drawing - but it has been an important tool in scientific understanding and discovery and was incredibly important before photography got underway. Herbaria are library collections of dried plants (herbarium specimens) and are beautiful, if sometimes a little eerie.

An interesting aside is that paintings made of Primula flowers a century before Darwin described the two different forms (thrum and pin) showed these features very clearly. There is also an archaeobotanist who has used renaissance art to uncover lost species of fruits.

5. 3D representations: Origami
There's a lovely bit in the film when Paddington imagines his aunt Lucy seeing a pop up book of London (first video) and I think we might have a nice session on the science of folding and space-saving. For example the second video shows a foldable solar array for use on space satellites (I think there's similar stuff going on with antennae too, which can be folded for launch and unfurl once in orbit).

 

 

6. 3D representations: rendering of images in computers
The wonderful Framestore once came to QMUL's computer science department to give a talk about their work on the film Gravity. Normally these talks are tolerably well-attended, this one was packed with people turning up all the time trying to squeeze in. It was also the same day as the Christmas Party so normally people would have been happy to bring things to a rapid conclusion and get to the beers and wine but we all cheerfully kept the Framestore chaps for an hour and a half pelting them with questions about how they'd done all this amazing stuff in computers. They also did the fantastic Visual Effects (VFX) for Paddington 2 and you can see some of their work in the video below.

 

7. Robotics
A bit more tenuous but there will be people who could talk you through what it would take to 'animate' one of the bins at Paddington station and have it wheel around the concourse thanking anyone who drops something in it.

8. Facial recognition technology
Phoenix Buchanan spends most of the film trying to disguise himself as different characters so that he can get close to various London landmarks without suspicion to collect a variety of letter clues deposited on them (these are to be played as musical notes on a fairground organ which will unlock it, letting the player access the treasure within). At 1m 33s in the video below Mrs Brown is having tea with Phoenix Buchanan and, alerted by his comment about a pencil drawing having blue eyes, realises that he is the thief as all the images of him drawn for the wanted posters suddenly overlay over his eyes. It reminds me of a scene in the film Amelie in which she makes a discovery (don't watch the video if you've not seen the film as it will spoil things for you).

There could be an interesting talk about facial recognition technology, how it's been used and misused - how biases in algorithms can hurt some sections of society in particular - and how some (though not all) police forces have stopped using it.

 

9. Steam trains
Slightly more tenuous but the Brown's son Jonathan is particularly keen on them and learns about them in his holiday, putting this knowledge to good use at the end of the film. Lots to be said about steam power, from a historic point of view too, and here are some fabulous photos of exploded boilers. Yikes.