The Lectures

2014 CHRISTMAS LECTURES^®
Sparks will fly: How to hack your home

Prof Danielle George [Image: Paul Wilkinson]

A revolution is happening. Across the world people are taking control of the devices we use every day, customising them, creating new things and using the sparks of their imagination to change the world. Now it’s your turn, and you can start with the things you have around you.

Electrical engineer, Prof Danielle George will take three great British inventions – a light bulb, a telephone and a motor – and show you how to adapt them and transform them to do extraordinary things. This is tinkering for the twenty-first century, using the full array of cutting edge devices that we can lay our hands on: 3D printers, new materials, online collaboration and controlling devices through coding.

Inspired by the great inventors and standing on the shoulders of thousands of people playing at their kitchen table or in their shed, Danielle will announce the new rules of invention and show you how to use modern tools and technologies and things from your home to have fun and make a difference to the world around you.

Anything could happen. Sparks will fly.

Lecture 1: The Light Bulb Moment

1878. Geordie inventor Joseph Swan demonstrates the first working light bulb. Now in 2014 we can find tiny LED’s in almost everything we own. So can we use a humble light bulb to start our own imaginative, creative process? Danielle will announce the new rules of invention and show you how to use modern tools and technologies to have fun and make a difference to the world around you.

Filming Date: Thursday 11 December 2014

Lecture 2: Making Contact

It was Scottish inventor Alexander Graham Bell who first managed to get the world’s first telephone to transmit speech – and now we carry these amazing devices around in our pockets! We’re now connected to everyone else in the world, so can we use these networks to solve problems? Danielle will innovate to make astonishing connections that Bell could only have dreamed of.

Filming Date: Saturday 13 December 2014

Lecture 3: A New Revolution

The Royal Institution’s very own Michael Faraday demonstrated the world’s first motor in 1822 – now we are surrounded by devices that spin, swing and saw. Engineers often find themselves in a cycle of prototyping, testing and perfecting, so can we use these principles to turn a motor into something world changing? Danielle will use her imagination and the new rules of invention to move things in ways that Faraday could only have dreamed of.

Filming Date: Tuesday 16 December 2014

Information on Tickets

Tickets to the filming of the CHRISTMAS LECTURES are available by ballot to members and fellows of Royal Institution and UK registered schools only. For information on the different levels of Ri membership available and how to apply for tickets to this once in a lifetime show, please visit www.rigb.org.