Have you heard the one about the Large Hadron Collider? No, I haven't either. But you could soon, because, over the next two months, the finest and funniest young minds in science will be battling it out on stage in an attempt to win NESTA FameLab. The competition, organised by the National Endowment for Science. Technology and the Arts, is best described as The X Factor of science: the challenge for researchers (or anyone working in a science-related industry) is to unleash an engaging scientific explanation on a lay audience, using whatever props they like (but not PowerPoint), in just three minutes.

We're talking science as stand-up. For those who manage to jam without the jargon, there is much at stake. Boffins who make it through the regional heats will appear at The Times Cheltenham Science Festival in June, in front of a panel of distinguished judges, including a bigwig from Channel 4, and be in with a chance of winning a short TV slot and £10,000. That's a decent haul for 180 seconds of work.

And it can be a life-changing event for those who take part: Steve Mould, a 30-year-old physics graduate of the University of Oxford and a 2007 finalist, is now a fully fledged media star, employed by Five and Blue Peter to dissect science for its viewers. He had been doing stand-up comedy before entering FameLab (you can find his clips on YouTube). And another finalist, Maggie Aderin, who happened to be in my physics class at university, went on to set up a touring science show for children and was appointed an MBE. The evolutionary biologist Simon Watt, a previous finalist, has presented for Channel 4, while the 2007 winner Jonathan Wood appears regularly on BBC Radio Oxford. The format has been exported worldwide, through the British Council, a co-sponsor, and, in Turkey at least, the FameLab brand reaches out to more than just geeks who like a laugh. Last year, half the population watched the national final on TV.

But jumping up on stage to deliver the lowdown on worms, proteins or the Higgs boson, or whatever other arcane subject you happen to be studying, is far from effortless. It can be just as challenging as doing real stand-up.

“Doing science on stage is actually quite similar to doing comedy,” says Mould, whose FameLab routines covered Benford's law (from statistics) and the Fibonacci sequence (which explains the numbers of petals on a flower). “In comedy you are building up to a ha-ha moment, and in science you're building up to a wow moment, when everything becomes clear. And, just like doing stand-up, the biggest problem is fear, and fear affects your performance.”

The more you do it, the less fearful you become. But that doesn't make it any easier when you “die” on stage. Mould remembers a “perfect storm” of adverse circumstances that made one night particularly memorable for all the wrong reasons. Another act had brought a crowd of supporters determined to find all other acts unfunny; Mould, already tired from a job that involved commuting to Glasgow, had gone out drinking the night before. When he got up on stage, it was not his finest hour. Nobody laughed. Mould recalls: “As I was walking out of the club, some of the audience were outside smoking. One shouted: ‘Rehearse more!' I'll never forget it. You do need to be thick-skinned.”

But it's not all about money and fame. Dr Mark Lythgoe, NESTA FameLab judge and director of The Times Cheltenham Science Festival, says that the winner needs to be inspirational: “Science is the key to solving some of the biggest issues facing society today, including climate change, obesity, Aids and renewable energies. Not only are we searching for charismatic new faces and voices of UK science, engineering and mathematics who can help to inform and excite the public about the day-to-day relevance of science, but we are also looking for passionate role models who can inspire the next generation of worldwide change-makers.”

Entrants should beware potential pitfalls, particularly in health and safety. Mould recalls the finalists in his year teaming up to put on a show for children, which involved making fireworks from icing sugar. The result was a room full of smoke and choking children. And, in another year, one contestant was taken to hospital with burns while mixing chemicals. Not quite the reaction he was hoping for.

www.famelab.org

The science of entertainment

F(x) walks into a bar. The barman says: “Sorry, we don't cater for functions”.

Q: Why are quantum physicists so

poor at sex?

A: Because when they find the position, they can't find the momentum, and when they have the momentum, they can't find the position.

Two atoms were walking across a road when one of them said:

“I think I lost an electron!”

“Really!” the other replied.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I 'm absolutely positive.”

A biologist, a physicist and a mathematician were sitting at a street café, watching the crowd. Across the street they saw a man and a woman entering a building. After ten minutes they reappeared, together with a third person.

“They have multiplied,” said the biologist.

“Oh no, an error in measurement,” the physicist sighed.

“If exactly one person enters the building now, it will be empty again,” the mathematician concluded.

There was an old lady called Wright

Who could travel much faster than light

She departed one day

In a relative way

And returned on the previous night.

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