Otley Science Festival started with a bang this week with a sellout family show featuring pyrotechnics aplenty.

Celebrity scientist Dr Marty Jopson, from BBC’s The One Show, delighted an audience at the Courthouse with a talk, packed with experiments, on gravity.

Stick insects and slime, meanwhile, had entertained younger children earlier during a Silly Science Toddler Time.

The festival will finish with a full-day science fair tomorrow when the Courthouse will host everything from a bicycle-powered smoothie-making machine to programmable robots.

Otley resident Dr Jopson, who helps organise the festival, said: “The science fair has been more fun than ever this year and we’ve also got some great shows.

“Come along and find out what’s going on. Everyone’s welcome.”

The fair, which is free to enter but with charges for some events, runs from 10am to 4pm.

More festival events still to come include three Big Bug Experience sessions for schools today and a talk on engineering, mathematics and the nude, exploring the overlap between art and science, tomorrow night.

The festival’s headline talk, meanwhile – Paradox: The Nine Greatest Enigmas in Science – will be given by the BBC’s Professor Jim Al-Khalili at 7.30pm on Saturday.

For more details, visit otleysciencefestival. co.uk or call (01943) 467466.