Punkscience: The Albert Einstein Experience

In an unprecedented bid to make physics funny, a team of comedy scientists are tackling one of the most complex (and possibly least amusing) scientific achievements of all time: Einstein’s three major theories including e=mc2. Through a series of comedy nights the punkscience team - who fuse Edinburgh Festival style comedy with serious science lecture - will explain all of it in 50 minutes of comic genius. They’ll also look at Einstein as an icon, what happened to his brain and why, like Oasis, he never quite lived up to the promise of his early work. Also showing 8 February.

punkscience: the Albert Einstein Experience is part of a centenary celebration, marking the 100th anniversary of the publication of Einstein’s three major papers that laid the foundation of modern physics.

Rufus Hound, punkscientist said: “For years, the Science Museum has done world-renowned shows for kids that explain how stuff works. Now it's the grown ups turn. A show that explains everything that Einstein brought to the table.

“Einstein was so ahead of his time, that when he did win the Nobel Prize in 1921, it was for his work on The Photoelectric Effect, suggesting that even sixteen years later, none of the Nobel Prize judges had worked out quite what The Special Theory of Relativity was.

“Then came a couple of spin off ideas: E=MC2 and the General Theory of Relativity. These lead indirectly to the atomic bomb and Steven Spielberg’s “Back To The Future” trilogy.

“The point is, that this is really, REALLY hardcore physics. The worst kind. Not the cool sort that lets you make a robot. Just the sort that explains why the universe had to have had a Big Bang, what gravity actually is and why Star Trek is rubbish.

“But if two comedians, a clown and a rock drummer can get to grips with it, then frankly, anyone can.”

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