BY ALBERT AMATEAU | The Ultimate Science Street Fair is coming to Washington Square Park on Sun., June 3, to climax the 2012 four-day World Science Festival bringing 50 events conducted by leading scientists, writers and artists.
The free Washington Square event will feature interactive exhibits, experiments and demonstrations from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., including a lab where visitors may control a computer by telepathy, ride a square-wheel tricycle, create their own cologne or learn science tricks to shoot perfect basketball free throws.
The fifth annual World Science Festival, from May 30 to June 3, will have both free and ticketed events and some by invitation only in various Manhattan and Brooklyn locations.
An extended free event, “Surface Tension: The Future of Water,” opens Wed., May 30, from noon to 6 p.m. at Eyebeam Art + Technology Center, 540 W. 21st St., and continues, Tuesdays to Saturdays, till Aug. 11. The interactive exhibition, created by Science Gallery, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, explores the looming water crisis.
Among the festival events requiring tickets, “Too Close to the Sun: Stories of Flash Points” will feature scientists and writers telling stories onstage at The Cooper Union’s Great Hall on Astor Place on Thurs., May 31, from 7:30 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Cosmologists will peer back to a fraction of a second after the Big Bang in “Primordial Light: Dispatches From the Birth of the Universe,” at N.Y.U.’s Skirball Center, 566 LaGuardia Place, from 8 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. May 31.
“The Elusive Neutrino and the Nature of the Cosmos” will be explored at The New School Tishman Auditorium from 7:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. Fri., June 1.
In “Reawakening the Brain Through Music,” the neurologist and best-selling author Oliver Sacks will lead a discussion about music’s uncanny abilities, including its healing powers, from 8 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. on June 1 at the Skirball Center.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Richard Rhodes and composers will talk about how the Hollywood actress Hedy Lamarr and the pioneering electronic music composer George Antheil teamed up during World War II to invent a secret communications system at an 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. program on June 1 at Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker St.
“Internet Everywhere: The Future of History’s Most Disruptive Technology” will bring computer scientists and media people to the Skirball from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. Sat., June 2.
“Exoplanets: The Search for New Worlds” will bring astronomers and physicists to The New School Tishman Auditorium from 3:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sat., June 2, to talk about the more than 700 confirmed planets and perhaps billions more circling other stars. The discussion will explore the tantalizing prospect for life as we know it and as we never imagined it on other worlds.
The $1 million Kavli Prizes in astrophysics, nanoscience and neuroscience will be announced via live satellite feed from the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in Oslo from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. Thurs., May 31, to an invitation-only audience at N.Y.U.
John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology, will be among the audience at the N.Y.U. Global Center for Academic and Spiritual Life, 238 Thompson St. at Washington Square South.
The festival’s Web site, www.worldsciencefestival.com, has complete program information. Tickets may be purchased online or by phone, 212-352-3101 or 866-811-4111, or at N.Y.U Ticket Central, at the Skirball Center, 566 LaGuardia Place.
