Oriel Science — Attraction in Castle

At first it seemed a bit bare. But actually after speaking with the people there, it made you realise there was so much to do and see. There were experiments and activities for the kids (or adults) to do all free of charge. The helpers all knew how the reactions worked and why and were very good at explaining. There was a talk held in the Easter holidays with a large projector and slides and then an interactive part after where we could dissect king prawns and look at them under the microscope, look at other animals legs and wings (bee, dragonfly etc) under microscopes and see bugs in resin. There are lots of information boards. They said they're having a big revamp soon ready for the summer holidays which will have more interactive things. The current set up was built during the covid pandemic and so had to be built to be wiped and cleaned and less interactive. So I'll be back in the summer. Check out their website for talks that are on in the holidays and activities. The kids also did a bug hunt and are put into a raffle...

Brilliant! Engaging interactive exhibition in a former shop which kept a teen and a tween and two adults well occupied for about an hour and a half. We really appreciated that it was of interest for an older audience, much more so than most hands on science places (though there was plenty for younger kids too) and were impressed by the the huge range of research going on across lots of different scientific fields that it gives an insight into. Not just good for science education but also careers awareness! Friendly helpful staff who helped us get the most out of exhibits, and were really good at communicating scientific concepts. Convenient location plus it's free which is fab. More people should know about this place for sure, it was sad it was so quiet, even if it meant we benefited from the 1:1 attention! Do give it a visit if you're in Swansea on a weekend, we're told they also do workshops most Saturdays which...

Honestly it was really boring, I only went for the DeLorean, but there's no DeLorean car. Some of the fixtures were broken, and I was confused why they weren't repaired. It's not exactly rocket science. The most interesting thing there was a poorly optimised Xbox connect v2 sensor, setup to face downwards at some deformable sand. Then a projector mounted above the sand would project different colours representing the height of the sand areas detected by the kinect sensor. It would have been good if it was programmed correctly, but unfortunately because it was poorly optimised it would take a few seconds for the heat map to be updated. Everything else was incredibly boring and I don't understand who's funding such a large area to be wasted on half-hearted school projects to be put on display as...