The Science Café at Orca Books has been tirelessly bringing science luminaries to Olympia to give talks and engage the sodden masses. Of course, for a lot of folks, the very mention of a "science lecture" might conjure up primal memories of carving doodles into high school desks out of sheer, rapturous boredom, or the frenzied anguish of wrist-tiring, increasingly incomprehensible note-taking. This is exactly the kind of negative association that the downtown Olympia bookstore is dead-set on destroying. In simple terms: Orca want to turn those of traumatized by the droning voices of our high school chemistry teachers into fascinated, tech-literate science aficionados. This month, Dr. Brian Polagye, Ph.D., co-director of the Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center and Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Washington, will present an overview of the current status of marine renewable energy research. We're talking, er, he's talking tidal turbines, marine energy converters and hydrokinetic turbines.

SCEINCE CAFÉ, 7 p.m., Orca Books, 509 E. Fourth Ave., Olympia, free, 360.352.0123

See Also

South Sound Holiday Command Center

Calendar: Arts and Entertainment

Calendar: Music and Nightlife