I was at an event yesterday and part of the event was a presentation by madscience.org/ni. Gary, the guy that runs the Northern Ireland franchise moved here from London 3 months ago to set up the company. It's based mainly at primary school level and the main body of his work is with primary schools with 8 weeks of shows on different areas of the curriculum. They also do birthday parties,corporate events and one off shows. I am not earning a commission here, but I think his show was great.
He had a hovercraft propelled by a black & decker leaf blower, we made icing sugar explosions, by gaffer taping a funnel to the end of a foot pump, filling it full of icing sugar and stamping on the foot pump whilst a naked flame was held to the funnel.
Whilst this set off the fire alarm, in the true spirit of science the show continued, making a methanol explosion in an 18 litre water bottle.
There is a .3gp mobile phone video of this here, Quicktime should play the clip.
To top the show off he brought a candy floss machine along, and we ended the event making candy floss.
The mad science events come from North America, and the franchise materials are as slick as you would expect, for kids parties they have goodie bags and the kids get to make and take home various bits and bobs.