Today I went to a park in Balwyn to see a slinky. It wasn't just any slinky, mind you, it was a Sliiinky - 21.73m in length made from a number of slinkies that have been soldered together by its creator, Robin.

I didn't just go there to see the sliiinky though, I went there to wriggle it, to watch other people wriggle it, and also to listen to it. I found out about the sliiinky via Slashdot, and I was rather surprised to hear that of 55,000 hits that Rob had received on his website, only one Melburnian slashdotter bothered to turn up -- I might not be one in a million, but at least now I know I'm at least one in fifty-five thousand!

The presence of Rob and Ian from The Curiosity Show (bless their cotton socks, I know one of them has popped his clogs but I can't remember which) was felt this evening. I had visions of an empty fish tank full of mouse-traps pre-loaded with ping-pong balls. Were they demonstrating fission? I can't remember. There was one youngster letting off home-made rockets, one of which spiralled off towards onlookers, only to peter out before doing any real comedy value.

The party started at 3pm and was billed to finish at 6, but recording eerie noises such as the wind rushing through sliiinky and the 'chirping' generated by tapping sliiinky from the 'other' end with a coin kept the proceedings going until well after dusk. This made 'bumping out' a little more difficult, but this was tempered by the many hands present.

One of my high-school teachers spend a few minutes one day elaborating on how there's science in maths, politics in geography and history in english, that is, there's bits of every subject mixed up in every other subject. Today was no exception, and it was amazing to see how many aspects of other fields of study manifested themselves. Sliiinky is as much a demonstration of art as it is of science, but watching children, teenagers and adults alike queue up for and play with sliiinky was almost as edumacational as sliiinky itself. The live music was nice too.