Perth Voice Interactive

SCIENCE is coming to the Perth cultural centre this weekend.

The free Perth Science Festival kicks off national science week, our first since the Abbott government deleted the science portfolio last year.

There’ll be 35 sciencey (and free) activities like the petting zoo, reptile display, science poetry and Tim Jarvis’ tales of recreating Shackleton’s Antarctic voyage.

Culinary Science chef Emma Donnelly will brew up some evidence-based dishes and bust a few old myths about cooking (salt in boiling water? Doesn’t affect the temperature, just makes the water a bit salty. Perfect egg whites? Use copper, baby! Mouldy food? Don’t just slice the fungus off, the whole lot’s ruined—urk!).

Ms Donnelly says cooking’s an area difficult to penetrate with evidence-based methods, since it’s so often based on tradition and the way things used to be done. If grandpa cooked his eggs a certain way, people assume it must be the best way and methods don’t get re-examined.

It’s changing though: “Since Heston Blumenthal’s become more popular, I think people are working up to that idea that there is a better way to do it.”

Ms Donnelly’s Culinary Science show is at 12.45pm, but there are events all Saturday from 10am to 7pm.

by DAVID BELL