Other Programmes/Exhibitions
The Innovation Story
(completed exhibiton)
Designed to be easily accessed by families on a day out, The Innovation Story celebrated the entrepreneurial spirit of New Zealanders as well as encouraging people with bright ideas to take them further.
The huge touring trailer – which opens out to three times its travelling size – contained many different modules that encourage visitors to participate in the great New Zealand innovation story. This includes a central core of information on bright ideas (supported by the University of Canterbury and Shieff Angland), surrounded by interactive displays based on the brilliant products and technologies of five specific companies.
People who visited the show could drive a Hamilton Jet unit and watch its underwater dynamics through a viewing window; use a talking Braille computer developed by Pulse Data International to help partially sighted people in their everyday lives; learn how to keep your throat healthy by doing a BLIS touch-screen quiz; try out the high-tech knitting process and touch the natural materials that make up Untouched World luxurious fashion; and interact with the control panel of a WhisperGen personal power station. You can also visit a range of web sites to find out more about innovation.
The Innovation Story toured New Zealand from November 2002 until March 2004.
RUTHERFORD: The story of a kiwi genius
(completed exhibiton)
This was the first significant national exhibition which tells the story and celebrates the achievements of Ernest Rutherford —New Zealand's most famous scientist.
Touring nationally from July 2000 to July 2002, this experience offered a great opportunity for visitors to get to know the man behind the science.
The exhibition blended a traditional approach, using real historic objects, with multi-media and hands-on science interactives. It includes some personal items never previously displayed to the public, offering a rare insight into Rutherford the man, as well as Rutherford the leading international experimentalist of his day.
Also presented for the first time in New Zealand, are specially-made replicas of the original science equipment used by Rutherford while at McGill University (Montreal), and a range of hands-on science interactives.
Together these bring into focus several critical areas of Rutherford's work, including radioactivity, transmutation of elements and the structure of the atom. The overall design of the exhibition also reflected Rutherford's work on atomic structure, for which he is most famous.
From Nelson to Nobel Prize
Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937) was a unique and yet a typical New Zealander. Brought up in rural Nelson as one of 12 children, he went on to become one of the University of Canterbury's most distinguished graduates.
Winning in his lifetime the Nobel Prize for Chemistry and the titles Baron, Sir and Lord.
His groundbreaking experiments in England and Canada were undertaken with some of the outstanding scientists of the twentieth century. Rutherford's fascinating life presents a great opportunity to tell a classic family story with tragedies and challenges, quirky anecdotes and twists of fate.
The exhibition is centred around this strong character who liked simple things, who was funny, impatient, yet always determined and gifted. Audiences will be intrigued by his life both inside the lab and out, astonished by his many achievements and his huge contribution to international science and to our everyday lives.
Night Skies
(completed exhibition)
This set of images provided a perfect opportunity to present an exhibition that appealed to both art and science audiences. The colour images of deep space cover an astonishing range of astronomical objects, some of the most distant and faintest ever detected. The images were made from plates taken on the Anglo-Australian Observatory's telescopes in New South Wales by David Malin.
The pictures showed objects never before seen in colour and that have their own special artistic appeal.
Brought into NZ for the International Science Festival in Dunedin, the exhibition was upgraded for its NZ tour following its tour around Australia.
The New Zealand tour of Night Skies was supported by The British Council, brought to New Zealand by P&O Nedlloyd and managed by The Roadshow.