Science meets Samba

Next time you want to get approval to visit party-city Rio during its raucous, musical, eye-popping Carnaval, tell people you're there to look at all the beautiful science.

The judges were very impressed, awarding Unidos da Tijuca the second place prize, and scoring the school less than a single point behind the grand prize winner.

Every year during Carnaval, 14 "major league" samba schools compete with each other for the best costumes, dancing, and themes during the famous parade. Nearly 100,000 fans pack the Sambadrome stadium, while close to 1 billion people worldwide observe the spectacle from afar on television or Internet. This year one of Rio's major schools, Unidos da Tijuca, teamed up with the science center at the Federal University of Rio on a novel, scientific theme. The school's 4,000 dancers were costumed or painted as atoms and molecules, and the choreography created samba-ing demonstrations of the DNA helix, the circulatory system, and atomic power. The title of the presentation was "The dream of creation and the creation of the dream - the art of science in the impossible age." The sambas probably sounded better than the title.

Read about the dancing DNA from the journal Nature

Better yet, watch a 3-minute video about the Sambadrome and the role of samba at Carnaval