By Karen Klinger

If you'd like to have lunch with a Nobel laureate, walk an evolutionary time line along Massachusetts Avenue, learn about the science of beer brewing, spend your own "Night at the Museum" or take part in dozens of other activities, Cambridge is the place to be this week during the city's second annual science festival.

This first-in-the-nation citywide celebration of science and technology kicked off nine days of events with a science carnival at city hall on April 26 featuring dozens of exhibitors, science experiments for kids, animals, robots and a giant inflated duck on the front lawn, courtesy of the Massachusetts Bay Estuary Association.

The science festival, which attracted more than 15,000 participants last year, is the brainchild of John Durant, the executive director of the MIT Museum, which will be opening a new multi-million dollar innovation gallery in September. This week, activities at the museum include daily brown bag bag lunches with Nobel Prize winners and "behind the scenes" looks at museum exhibits.

Among those at the kickoff was Mary Raczko, partnership liaison for the Boston Harbor Islands national park area. As she readily acknowleged, the harbor islands for centuries were little appreciated, used as dump sites or for military purposes and virtually unknown to the general public.

But that changed in 1996 with the establishment of the national park area, encompassing 34 islands and 35 miles of undeveloped shorelines within 10 miles of downtown Boston. At the science carnival, Raczko was touting the "citizen science" programs on the islands that offer individuals, families, students and community groups a chance to learn about the natural and cultural history of the islands.

The programs include the Boston Harbor Islands Partnership, in which the National Park Service and Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology have teamed up to compile a "biodiversity inventory" of insects and other invertebrates on the islands. To encourage public participation, the partnership has developed a "teaching kit" that explains how to catch, identify and preserve specimens for inclusion in the database.

Also at the carnival was Blue Magruder, a spokeswoman for Harvard's venerable Museum of Natural History, the university's most-visited museum and repository for 12,000 display items including dinosaurs, meteorites, fossils and the 3,000 famous "Glass Flowers" made by father and son artists Leopold and Rudolph Blaschka.

Magruder said that as part of the festival there will be a special free "Night at the Museum" on May 2 from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. when visitors can see, among other attractions, a 12-foot-tall Plateosaurus, an amethyst geode weighing 1,642 pounds, an exhibit called "Arthopods: Creatures that Rule," featuring beetles and butterflies and interactive displays, as well as live animals.

On May 4, the North Cambridge Opera Company will help wrap up the festivities with a free performance by 150 adults and children of the American premiere of the science oratorio "The Powers of Ten." It will take place from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. at MIT's Stata Center, 32 Vassar St.

The complete festival schedule is available at www.CambridgeScienceFestival.org. For information on the Boston Harbor Islands national park area, go to www.bostonharborislands.org.