Scientific Poster Competition

Posted on 12/07/201816/07/2018 by YM Webmaster

At the end of the academic second semester, a poster contest was made in our department. The timing of this activity was well thought since the presentation of the bachelor projects and master thesis was just around the corner. This would promote an interest in the ongoing projects of the students. The main objective of this contest is the improvement of the writing and oral capabilities of the students, which will be shown important in future conferences that they might participate. Being this said, the activity was conducted for students participating in bachelor or master courses, being extended to students attending the 1st year doctoral program.

In a first phase was asked for a small abstract of the presented project, and later the poster version. These were printed by our section and, later, delivered to the students. If the number of abstracts shown itself relatively high for our budget a selection of the best abstracts would be performed. We were granted with 10 posters, where only one was from a student doing the bachelor project at the same time. Most of the other posters were from master thesis, bachelor projects or individual work for a course. These covered different areas, since applied physics, theoretical physics and oceanography. Being the later the less abundant, with only one poster. We were still, very praised with the number of interested students.

The jury panel was composed of researchers from different fields of study, since applied physics to theoretical physics, is in accordance with the expected submitted posters. It was decided that the judges should select the criteria for the nomination of the three best posters. The scheme of the presentation was also decided by the judges, were the contestants should present their work in 3 minutes, followed by some questions from the judges. The presentation was realized on the 6th of June. These were placed in the atrium of the physics department, this way every person that would enter the place would see them. This attracted a lot of attention, due to the quality of the poster itself and due to the place where they were posted. The placement was made one day before the presentations so that the number of interested people would increase.
This attracted a really good audience, since students to professors, on the day of the presentation. After the presentation a coffee break was realized for all the people involved in this activity. The three best prizes were from Physical Engineering students. The first prize winner was given to Nuno Caçoilo, a student from the 1st year of the master degree, with its bachelor project, under the title Tuning the magnetic anisotropy in perpendicular magnetic tunnel junctions (pMTJ) by means of ion irradiation.

The second prize was given to Bohdan Kulyk, a student on its 1st year of the doctoral program, under the name CVD Graphene for Electrochemical Biosensing: Synthesis, Characterisation and Device Fabrication. The third, and last prize was given to Liliana Sousa, a student doing its master thesis (from which the poster was about) under the portuguese theme Emissor ótico recongurável para Lidar. Being this poster presentation the first experience for most of the students we are glad with the ideas and constructive commentaries of the jury panel. We expect that next year the numbers of students will be larger since their bachelor project and master thesis is already concluded.

Science4People BU Story!

Posted on 12/07/2018 by YM Webmaster

“From a principle to a dream the story was”
We were a small group consist of students from Bethlehem University, who believed in the message of sunshine4Palestine team. For this reason, we decided to join them as science4people BU team, at this point we decided to take our first step and begin from somewhere.
AL-Masoudi primary school for girls was our first destination. We introduced 7 scientific experiments for kids their ages between 6-8 years old. We were so proud to say that 90 students enjoyed our first event. Our experiments were simple and easy as the ones we taught from the sunshine4Palestine team when they visited us. At the end, despite all the circumstances that faced us when we held this event, we can say that it was the first step for us toward another success.

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”
In our second event we moved to one of the biggest colleges in Bethlehem, to Terra Santa College. We presented 10 new and not classical science experiments for students from 8th grade, who were almost 100 students. Our experiments were interesting and useful, which give the students new information, and give them a chance to practice what they learned previously. This was another step for us toward our goals and success.

“We were so excited to continue what we began”
Our next destination was the Lutheran Evangelical school, in this event we change our strategy by trained a group of school students to stand with us and present the experiments for their colleagues. WE presented 20 experiments for students who their ages were between 13 – 18 years old. The experiments were suitable for all the students who came, they were simple, but at the same time they need thinking and analyzing. We can say that we are happy that more than 230 students were with us and enjoyed our experiments.

“The ball is in our court”
We always take the advantage of any event that gets anywhere to develop and expand our team, and to help us achieve our goals, we continued our journey in the Bethlehem University Science Fair, in which we got a special place to present our experiments to the biggest attendees, more than 400 students from different schools visited us in a two days event! We presented more than 25 experiments.

Science4People BU story did not end, we will provide you with the next parts soon!

Contest of Experiences

Posted on 12/07/2018 by YM Webmaster

The purpose of this contest was to explore the creativity of the students in our Physics Department, from the Bachelor and Masters degrees. Due to the diversity of study fields in our Department, there was expected different kinds of projects and ideas.
This activity was made in association with the Show da Física, a show well known in our University and region, designed to spread the beauty of physics through entertaining experiments and demonstrations in, usually, high schools and for incoming students, not only for the ones pursuing this field of study. One of our objectives with this activity was the possible integration of an experiment in their show. Therefore, some requisites were made.
The experiences should be designed to be adaptable to be made in a classroom. Also, the understanding of the physical phenomena should be such that a high schooler would understand it.
The contest was designed in three different phases. In a first phase the contestants should deliver a brief report explaining their idea (mainly, which physical phenomena were behind it), the necessary materials for its execution and the budget. Our section contributed with a budget for the construction of the experiments.
In this phase 3 students decided to participate. These were from different years of study and their ideas were from different areas.
The topics of the ideas were diverse. One from electromagnetism, where the student made a Tesla coil and tried to explain its functioning. Other from hydrodynamics, were the Bernoulli principle was put into practice. And the last from robotics, were the student crafted a small drone with movement sensors.
Even though only three people decided to participate in this contest, the Show da Física personal was really excited, since the interest of undergraduate students in their show was absent until the date.
After a time of roughly 2 months, the students had to present an experiment that explained their idea. This presentation was made public in the 2nd of May. The jury panel was composed of our president and the professors responsible for the Show da Física. In order to evaluate the di􏰀erent contestants, the judges classified the idea, explanation and execution of such idea components.
The public appearance was higher than expected, where more than 40 students appeared to support their colleagues. In the end a coffee break was made for the people involved in the activity.
We expect that some people who appeared in the presentation are interested to do their own experiment next year, so the continuation of this activity is of great importance. Also, the Show da Física was very pleased and offered motivation for future activities of the same genre. The experience of the Bernoulli principle is thought to compose one of their future presentations.

Computational Physics Course

Posted on 12/07/2018 by YM Webmaster

Taking into consideration the success of our last theoretical course about General Relativity, lectured by professor Carlos Herdeiro, we opted to embark on other course given by a lecturer from the same research group (Gr@v).
Motivated by our colleagues who wanted to learn Python, we asked professor Valério Ribeiro, a researcher at Gr@v, to give some lectures about how to solve physics problems in that programming language.
The course, which was named Computational Physics, took place from the 8th of March until the 7th of June, once a week, during the afternoon.
In the initial sessions, the professor taught the basics of the Python language, which is incredibly useful in Physics. Each lecture had the duration of 1 hour and a half. After an initial presentation of the methods and the algorithms we were going to use, the sessions were spent solving exercises on personal computers.
The initial attendance exceeded our expectations, registering a surprising number of 33 students, from most of the courses lectured in the Department and even some alumni. These students were allocated in all years of studies, from the 1st year to the 5th year.
Even though the number of students decreased with the number of lectures (as expected), a reasonable number of students stayed, which made the lecturer – student relation more informal.
In the end of the course a certificate (with a template given by EPS) was gave to the students. Each one had the handwritten signatures of the president of our section and the lecturer, Valério Ribeiro, to whom we are thankful for sharing his knowledge with the students.
The feedback of our courses is positive and we intend on continuing on doing them next year.

Volunteers-development weekend

Posted on 12/07/201812/07/2018 by YM Webmaster

From the 30th of March until the 1st of April 2018 the Rino Foundation had its volunteer development weekend. The weekend was very exciting for everyone involved. The members loved it, learned a lot and the people who gave the workshops were also very excited about the group.
Volunteers at Rino primarily give science shows in the whole country. These shows are given by two presenters. Because the volunteers have to work together, it is very important that they know each other in different manners. On the weekend we organised activities for people to strengthen their bond. We did, for example, a karaoke night. To hear other people try to sing definitely puts people into perspective 😉
In order to enhance presentation skills, we invited an expert in public speaking to the weekend. He gave a very inspiring talk and we did a workshop on debating, which led to interesting discussions, but was especially useful for learning how to communicate in a nice way. He is also a high school teacher and taught us about communicating with kids aged around 15.
The last big thing which was very useful, was the ice cream making workshop. After the Freezing Physics shows the high school kids receive ice cream (made with liquid nitrogen). To find out which ice cream to use next year, we experimented with different kinds of ice cream to test and taste which was the best (see the attached photo).
In short, we learned a lot during the weekend, strengthened the bond between section members (and the board) and enhanced our public speaking skills in a workshop.

Visit to the Astronomical park in Isnello

Posted on 12/07/2018 by YM Webmaster

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Since ancient times, the study of the sky was not only of fundamental importance for life, but was always accompanied by a sense of fear and fascination linked to the magic of the cosmos. The scientific discoveries lead us to better knowledge of the universe and its boundaries.
In this frame, we organized a guided tour of the astronomical park “Gal Hassin” in Isnello, in the province of Palermo. It was a unique and formative experience for all the participants that had the possibility to visit and enjoy a park dedicated to the history of astronomy, as well as a spectacular planetarium, and of making night observation of the sky by means of professional telescopes.
After the bus trip from Messina to Isnello, the guided tour started visiting the outdoor astronomical laboratory, the “park of time and space”, with various types of solar clocks and other instruments such as the “Hipparchus Circle”.
Afterwards, we moved to the Planetarium. This fascinating educational machine for the reproduction of the celestial vault, with a dome of 10 m of diameter, is the first digital astronomical planetarium of Sicily; the entire dome is illuminated by 6 high resolution video projectors that make up the 360° image of the whole sky. Isnello’s Planetarium has been a powerful tool for the dissemination of astronomical concepts where the participants have been involved in a charming tour among the Moon, the Sun, the Milky Way galaxy with its constellations, Mars, Saturn, many other celestial bodies and curiosity about our universe.
Anyway, the most awaited moment was the night observation of the sky. So, in a terrace with 12 instruments for astronomical observations, after an initial introduction on several celestial bodies visible to the naked eye, the staff of the park guided us to the use of the different telescopes that allow the observation of planets and nebulae. In particular we could directly observe the Moon and Saturn.
Just after this, a “surprise” refreshment was offered to all the participants by the staff of the park.
The 54 participants were enthusiastic about this amazing experience and they appreciated the economic help received from EPS to pay part of the entrance ticket to the astronomical park.

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The Camera Obscura

Posted on 12/07/201812/07/2018 by YM Webmaster

Unfortunately during this year the Young Minds Section did not have any outreach activity with students in our Headquarters. Therefore we are not able to use the Human-Size camera obscura. However, we build different portable size camera obscura and we brougth it to our outreach activities in the schools. Next year we plan to be part of the science week organized by the University, in this case we are sure we can use the human-size camera obscura.
Regardless the problem to do this activity, the group made an effort to bring students a fresh vision about optics in different school activities, bringing brand new activities like dissecting cow eyes in order to show how an eye works and its parts. Moreover the group is concerned about the important of the gender equality, for this reason we continue collaborating with the city council in an activity called: “A woman scientist in each school” that is its third edition and has a big impact and good acceptance among teachers and students.
Moreover the group is concerned with the professional development of its members and the surrounding scientific community of the University of Santiago de Compostela, for this reason the group has organized several conferences and lectures this year about different topics in optics. In January we brought professor Pieter de Beule from the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory from Braga, Portugal, with the talk: Overview Research Activities Applied Nano-Optics Team. In March, Raul Rangel from CICESE (Mexico) made a conference called: Nano Structured materials for nonlinear optics and wave guiding devices. Finally, in July we brought Prof. Virendra Mahajan from the College of Optical Science with the talk entitled: Axial Irradiance of a focused beam.

Lunch lecture with Swedish Young Minds

Posted on 18/05/201802/06/2018 by YM Webmaster

The activity was a lunch lecture about gravitational waves held by professor Ulf Gran, with partial aim to promote the Swedish Young Minds section and gain more members. The lecture was held at Chalmers University of Technology (CUT) in Gothenburg on the 20th of April in connection to one of the board’s planning meetings for the Lise Meitner-days event, our annual activity weekend for high school students from all over the country, which is currently the main activity of our section. In that way, all members of the board could be present. Our section was founded very recently so gaining publicity and members are currently our main goals. Providing lunch and an interesting lecture is known to be a successful way to gain publicity that other organisations do from time to time at CUT, and the number of attendants and the response we got indicated that this event was successful as well.
Before the lecture advertisement was made by putting up posters in the physics department building and a few other places, by giving announcements in lecture breaks and by sharing a facebook-event. This turned out to give sufficient publicity to attract more people than the 100 lunches we provided.
We (the board) started with presenting ourselves, the Swedish Young Minds section, what kind of activities we are planning to arrange in the future and why the attendants should become members. For the rest of the lecture we invited professor Ulf Gran to talk about gravitational waves. Professor Gran is known to be a very popular lecturer from the first course in mechanics at the Engineering Physics and Engineering Mathematics programmes, where most of the attendants study. He has also been awarded several pedagogical prices from CUT and was therefore considered a very suitable choice of lecturer.
The lecturer involved a description of the basic concepts concerning gravitational waves and the experiments made to detect them, many illustrating animations and a live demonstration of an interferometer to illustrate the operation principles of the LIGO detector. There were quite a lot of questions both during the lecture and afterwards, and the overall reaction showed that the attendants thought the lecture was very interesting.
The 100 first attendants, which was also the actual number who participated, were provided half a pizza and a soft drink. Providing pizza for lunch was considered a good option with costs comparable to or even less than other common alternatives such as salads or baguettes, and we also believe it was much more appreciated. We also got a small price reduction from where we bought the pizzas (0.5 euro/pizza). After the lecture we handed out a note with instructions for how to become a member, and a few students also stayed and talked both to professor Gran about the lecture and to us about the future plans for our section.

YtY – Space laboratories: space experiments and missions to find our origin.

Posted on 17/04/201823/04/2018 by YM Webmaster

Students choose university courses mostly upon what they like, but rarely they know what truly means working in a particular area. This is true both for research and industry. There are informative initiatives, but we realised that students want to know about the decision progress older collegues have taken, maybe only a couple of year before them. Then, we organize “Young to Young” (Y2Y) meetings in order to let young speakers tell young students why they decided to start a PhD or to be enrolled by a company or which was their thesis project, presenting their whole experience.

The first Y2Y meeting was presented by Dr. Riccardo Giovanni Urso, graduated at the University of Catania in Science Materials and Nanotechnology. He focused on the fact that his research project concerned the formation of materials in space that led to the origin of life, an interdisciplinary path that gave him the right enthusiasm. He described his work, his results and how he learned from all people he came in contact. At the end, there was time dedicated to questions by students.

Undergraduate students and early master’s students were the target of this meeting. We were able to attract an audience of about 30 people.

We asked all participants to fill a survey. Feedbacks are clear: they appreciated this initiative and all of them will participate next meetings. They also appreciated the fact that a young person was spoke to them. Finally, we need to improve the advertising to reach more students and attract them.

Student Meeting: “Famelab Catania 2018”

Posted on 12/04/2018 by YM Webmaster

Famelab is a science communication competition with the aim of entertain by talking science. Since its launch in 2005 in Cheltenham (UK) Famelab has become the world’s biggest communication contest for scientists, and today the event includes more than thirty countries. This challenge is open to young researchers, university students and anyone involved in science who loves talking about a scientific topic in an effective way. In fact, the competitors have only three minutes to tell the object of their research activity or a fascinating scientific topic to a heterogeneous public (researchers, university and high-school students, families…), only with the help of their communication skills and small objects of everyday life. In each local contest, the “famelabers” are judged by a selected jury (scientists, communicators, journalists…). The jury choose the two winners who will participate to the “masterclass”, a three-days training event with professional science communicator, and then to the national and, eventually, international competition.

Since 2017 Catania is one of the italian selection sites for Famelab, and for the second year EPS Young Minds team has been directly involved in the organization of the event as major sponsor, providing also technical support services. In particular, based on the big success of the 2017 edition in terms of participants and feedbacks from the public, in 2018 the YM section proposed a new three-days format for the local event: two semi-finals and the final contest. In each day, the YM section and invited a high-profile scientist to be part of the jury, and to do a seminar about frontier research topics at the end of contest. The three invited high-level scientists were:

Barbara Mazzolai, Director of the Center for Micro-BioRobotics of the IIT (Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia), who talked about bioinspired robotics and the future of robotics.
Luigi Cattivelli, Director of the Genomics Research Center of the Agrigultural Research Council, who presented his research activity on genetics and molecular biology of cereals.
Eugenio Coccia, Rector of the Gran Sasso Science Institute and one of the authors of the discovery gravitational waves and of the first observation of black holes, who talked about the born of a new astronomy with gravitational waves.

At the beginning and at the end of the three presentations, the speakers did not lose the opportunity to acknowledge the YM section and in general the YM philosophy. A great participation of scientists and students was appreciated not only during the contest but also during the presentations, and there were also strong interactions with the three speakers, moderated and catalysed by the YM members.