This year’s theme of National Science Week is “Seeds of Science: Nurturing knowledge for all”. Over the weekend, you’ll get the chance to build your own Caesar cipher and learn cryptography skills to decrypt secret messages in our interactive treasure hunt, get creative with our family friendly maths craft activities and find out how the Enigma machine encrypts coded messages at one of our demonstrations.

Maths Craft Activities (Saturday & Sunday 12 – 4 pm)

Get creative with a variety of family-friendly maths craft activities. Follow simple patterns to create colourful artwork using yarn and explore how straight lines can form curves resulting in beautiful intricate designs. Or use a variety of bendy and wacky mirrors to explore concepts such as symmetry, transformation and how to map a flat image onto a 3D object! Craft your own wacky mirror to take home.

Cryptography treasure hunt (Saturday & Sunday 12 – 4 pm)

Explore cryptography and codes in this interactive hunt around the museum. Learn different ciphers used to encode messages, build your own Caesar cipher, and use your new cryptography skills and tools to decrypt the secret messages!

Enigma machine demonstrations (Sunday from 12pm)

Join Mike Pritchard from the Australian Spy Museum to find out how the Enigma machine was developed and operated to encrypt coded messages at one of our Enigma Machine presentations. As most Enigmas were intentionally destroyed, very few people ever get to see this technology working in practice. For a better understanding of the secret history of WWII and the birth of computing, don't miss this extraordinarily rare opportunity to see and use working Enigma machines.