Children and their parents and teachers will be able to experience some of the mystery and magic of science during a festival starting in Oxfordshire on January 24.

For a fortnight, The Oxford Trust will stage a series of events which form the 13th annual Oxfordshire Science Festival.

This year the festival will offer twice as many attractions as in previous years and there will be plenty to entertain children and for teachers to take back to the classroom.

Owen Gledhill and Bradley Miles take part in the first stage of the festival's Million Dice Roll, an event about probability The Oxford Trust is a charitable organisation which works with businesses and schools to raise the profile of science and enterprise in Oxfordshire.

Throughout the two weeks of the festival there will also be a programme of events for primary and secondary schools.

These include a range of workshops for teachers in Key Stages 2 and 3 exploring the powerful and widely used 'Concept Cartoons' approach to teaching, learning and assessment in science, next Monday at Oxford Brookes University.

On January 28, teachers of Key Stage 4 will have the opportunity to look at the development and current understanding of the 'Plate Tectonic' theory.

On the same day, A-Level Science and Maths students can take part in the Royal Navy Engineering Challenge, at Faringdon Community College, where they will be designing an amphibious vehicle capable of retrieving floating debris from the surface of the water.

Science co-ordinators in primary schools can get tips and help in 'Running your own event', a workshop organised by Oxfordshire County Council science team on January 29, at the Cricket Road Centre, east Oxford.

To mark the fact that this is the 13th festival, there is an experiment involving chance and luck called the Million Dice Roll which encourages participants at every event as well as schools around the county to feed the results into the festival website.

Anne Lechelle, the Oxfordshire Science Festival co-ordinator, said: "This 13th festival is particularly exciting for us as we are heading towards establishing the festival as a major event within the Oxfordshire calendar as well as encouraging more science events, which engage the public, throughout the year."

For more programme information and booking details call 01865 811105 or e-mail the trust at festival@oxtrust.org.uk