Press Release - BBC's Test The Nation quiz

Mullard Space Science Laboratory

P R E S S R E L E A S E
01 June 2005

Steve Welch flies high in Test The Nation quiz

Saturday night saw MSSL's Steve Welch take part in the BBC quiz show 'Test the Nation' as part of a team of 40 rocket scientists.

Dressed in the stereotypical white coat* the entrants played through several rounds of questions related to the 20th century, including a round on science. The rocket scientists were just one of 6 teams battling to be the winner. The other teams were artists, bikers, check-out girls, paramedics and driving examiners. A small selection of celebrities were on hand to be quizzed too.

After a long, but fun, day the rocket scientists hard work paid off as they were named as joint winners with the paramedics. The highest score out of all the people playing was 64/70 and Steve's score was only just under this at 63/70.

Steve said, "The whole event was great fun and extremely well organised. I hope that there will be another opportunity for MSSL to take part in the future."

* the white coats were 'TV white' which is actually light beige!

LMG.

The Rocket Scientists (Image courtesy Talent TV)

Notes to Editors:

Mullard Space Science Laboratory, UCL

MSSL is situated in Holmbury St Mary between Dorking and Guildford, and is the Space and Climate Physics Department of University College London. The Group moved from London to Holmbury St Mary in 1965 after Holmbury House was purchased with funds donated by the Mullard electronics company. 150 scientists work at MSSL across 5 groups; solar and stellar physics, planetary and plasma physics, astrophysics, detector physics and climate physics. The laboratory houses world-class facilities to design, build and test instrumentation as well as analyse the data taken by the instruments in space.

Contacts

Dr Lucie Green
Mullard Space Science Laboratory
Tel: 01483 204100 (Switchboard)
Email: lmg@mssl.ucl.ac.uk

Saturday night saw MSSL's Steve Welch take part in the BBC quiz show 'Test the Nation' as part of a team of 40 rocket scientists. Dressed in the stereotypical white coat* the entrants played through several rounds of questions related to the 20th century, including a round on science. The rocket scientists were just one of 6 teams battling to be the winner. The other teams were artists, bikers, check-out girls, paramedics and driving examiners. A small selection of celebrities were on hand to be quizzed too.
After a long, but fun, day the rocket scientists hard work paid off as they were named as joint winners with the paramedics. The highest score out of all the people playing was 64/70 and Steve's score was only just under this at 63/70. Steve said, "The whole event was great fun and extremely well organised. I hope that there will be another opportunity for MSSL to take part in the future." * the white coats were 'TV white' which is actually light beige! LMG.	The Rocket Scientists (Image courtesy Talent TV)