Every year, Riga Young Minds section figures out a new direction in which to grow our School for Young Physicists project – this time, we began expanding our efforts beyond traditional sessions with lectures and tried building physics workshops at various events – such as town fairs, festivals and summer camps for children, even briefly appearing in a TV show.
Once the season ends in May, we have free time during the summer, and it can be put to good use. Our workshop activities especially ramped up towards the second half of summer 2016 – numerous towns invited us to fairs, we took part in the extreme sports festival “Playground”, appeared on a TV quiz for school students called “eXperiments”, took part in a project that merges humanitarian arts such as song and poetry with the precision of physics, and much more. In these workshops, we take a step away from our typical format, focusing more on the fun one has doing experiments and trying to raise interest in physics by way of the wow-factor. For this reason, we built gadgets such as a huge slingshot and assembled a spud gun.
The workshops appear to have been a success, as we received more and more offers to host our workshops as the summer rolled on and transitioned into autumn. With the beginning of our school year season, these activities have toned down in intensity, but nevertheless happen from time to time. The second semester promises more workshop activities and physics demonstrations, as the yearly TV show will take place again in the spring season and a few other projects take place.