The EPFL YM section was freshly and newly created. As targeted we could organize 3 ‘Pizza Physics Beer’ (PPB) seminars gathering from 20 to 30 people each time. The subjects we explored through these meetings covered nuclear fusion with a visit of the Tokamak reactor of EPFL, ultra hard materials which could be used for propellers and the hazards in nuclear reactor with an analysis of previous nuclear accident and the pertinence of the risk mitigation measures that were taken. This seminar serves now as the flagship event of our interactions within the Physics community at EPFL.
We also organized a visit to IBM Research in Zurich to participate to the event “Hack a Quantum Computer – Getting Involved with the IBM Quantum Experience“. It was the opportunity for us to meet with other EPS and YM members. It triggered the interaction of biophysicists, astrophysicists or condensed matter physicists from the campus around a common topic, namely the birth of quantum cloud computing. These first events made possible by the EPS grant are very encouraging and show us that we can make the EPFL physics community more vivid and interact more widely within the EPS community.
A new dimension
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.
Regional sessions of the School for Young Physicists
During the 7th season of SYP, Riga Young Minds section has continued to expand our efforts to bring physics education to areas that are further from the capital of Latvia. In addition to the destinations we visited in the past season (Valmiera, Kuldiga and Ventspils), we’ve added another large city to that mix – this year, Liepaja, our most southwestern city, has joined the fold.
A variety of topics have been presented – sometimes, topics that have yet to premiere in the capital have test runs, other times, well established (and improved) topics are chosen. Across various cities, lectures on topics such as astronomy, acoustics and forensic science have been given.
Even if the topics repeat in different cities, the approach is often different, because the audience is different – in Kuldiga, it a smaller group of high school students, but in Ventspils, for example, it is a larger group of grade 8 – 9 students. To make the experience as entertaining and valuable as possible, we try to tailor each session to the audience that we’re visiting.
During this semester, the SYP team has visited Valmiera three times, Kuldiga twice, Ventspils twice and Liepaja once. Our aim is to continue holding sessions in these cities in the second half of the school year as well, and plans for adding sessions in another city are in the works.
School for Young Physicists
This season marked the seventh anniversary of the main project of our YM section – the School for Young Physicists (SYP). Each month, around 200-250 students from schools all over Latvia gather in the University of Latvia for an entertaining Saturday and to learn some extracurricular physics.
Sessions are held each month, each with a different theme. Every session starts with two popular lectures, 40 minutes in duration, held by physics students of various levels in University of Latvia. In these lectures, topics that generally are not discussed in school are presented in an entertaining manner. Thereafter, participants take a 30-minute break and are treated to a lunch with sandwiches and tea. Then follows the practical part, in which students themselves put the things they’ve just learned to the test. Afterwards another break is held in which students are again treated with food, this time with sweets such as chocolate and cookies and tea. Lastly, a professor or a specialist in the topic is invited for a more in-depth lecture.
A competition called the “School cup” is also held during the season, in which teams of 5 students representing their school do creative tasks assigned to them to come out victorious. Eternal glory and different prizes await for the winners of this competition. This season, 15 different teams are rivaling for the School cup.
On September 24, the seventh season was kicked off with a session titled “Mythologics” in which we discussed how using relatively simple knowledge of physics one can evaluate the plausibility of different claims.
On October 15, the second session of SYP took place. This time, the physics of sound was the topic, and the session was titled “With a physical undertone”.
On the November 12, students gathered to participate in the third session of SYP7 which was titled “Transmitted!” and was about radio-electronics.
On December 10, the last session of the autumn semester was held. Titled “Calculate like a star”, the topic for this session was astronomy.
Specialized talk
Konstanz jDPG-YM Section organized a specialized talk about a research topic which is not present at the University of Konstanz. The invited speaker was Dr. Benjamin Reuter from the WSL – Institute for snow and avalanche research SLF in Davos, Switzerland. The title of the talk was “Avalanches – from cloud to cloud”. The specialized talk was held in framework of the colloquium of the physical department of the University of Konstanz. In a very impressive way Dr. Reuter introduced the audience to avalanche research and common measurement and forecasting techniques. In the talk he presented some of the general properties of snow and a fracture mechanical framework to interpret snow properties in view of snow instability. He showed measurement techniques to obtain such measures in the field, but also modelling approaches. The presentation indicated that the application of this framework to real cases will reveal the driving agents shaping the mountain snow cover and influencing snow instability under real, observed meteorological conditions. Assessing the influence of those driving agents is the key to future numerical avalanche forecasting approaches.
Due to the geographical location of Konstanz many of the faculty members are doing snow sports, so our intention to invite a guest who gives insight into a new research topic which is interesting for many faculty members was completely fulfilled. The attendance was significantly above the ordinary and a lot of students were introduced to the colloquium. For us the specialized talk was a great success and we got a lot positive feedback.
School Outreach
The Erlangen YM Section continued their program to visit local schools and tell them about how fundamental science works. With this, they not only showed how research is performed, but gave a peak into the actual life of a researcher. Starting from developing an idea in the shared kitchen of the group, drawing first experimental sketches on the whiteboard and building a first setup – these are the roots of experimental research that get everything else started. Continuing on the topic, the pupils were taught that every experiment and every theory always undergoes some sort of revision process that usually starts with analyzing some measurement results, goes on with a discussion and commonly ends with an adjustment of the experiment or theory. Finally, research needs communication. Without that, nobody would know today about the great achievements of science and nobody could base their work on the millions of papers already published. The pupils (11th grade) were very intrigued by the honest and insightful picture that was given to them and asked many questions both during and after the lecture.
The presentation was accompanied by an experiment that the section brought along to show that whatever was told in the presentation has some realism to it. The pupils were able to make the connection and continue with their questions in a hands-on manner, while being fascinated that single molecules can be resolved by a portable tabletop experiment.
The pupils were not the only ones who learned something. For the Erlangen YM section, it proves to be a valuable lesson to step out of the research lab for a day and do something completely different. Explaining your research during an outreach event grounds you and lets you reconnect to the value of your findings. Through this event, one member of the section was even able to re-visit his old school and delve into past time memories.
Youth Education
Optical Workshop:
Each year University Jaume I (UJI) of Castellón celebrates the days of dissemination called “Connecta amb la Ciència” (means “Connect with the Science”). These days have the objective of publicize the courses and degrees offered by the scientific area of the UJI. People (teachers, postdocs, students…) working in several areas from the university go to many places around the region of Castellón and offer workshops about chemistry, videogames, optics and photonics, renewable energies, etc. and many high school students attend these workshops.
Taking advantage of the conference “Connecta amb la Ciència” the GOC members have travelled through different towns of the province to bring science to high school students.
We have prepared several micro workshops to show different physical properties and concepts related to optics (atmospheric scattering, refraction, diffraction on a CD, light absorption, polarization…) and also explain how works the human eye. In this way, students from all region have the opportunity to learn science by having fun.
We showed these workshops in 2014 and 2015 and teachers from different high schools requested our workshops also for this year 2016 because the students enjoyed them. This year we have visited three towns, Teruel (9/11/2016), Villarreal (24/11/2016) and Sagunto (29/11/2016). We have some new material for improve our explanations, as for example fluorescent sheets and UV lasers. This activity reached up to 200 students from several places.
First contact with the university:
The second week of January we offered to students in last high school year several seminars. Firstly, we started the sessions with the presentation of our group GOC and our ongoing and future activities. After we showed them some light properties, they made a practical activity related with diffraction to guess if they have a DVD or a CD.
FIRUJI-CIENCIA:
On May took place an activity developed by UJI called FIRUJICIÈNCIA where students from high school and university had the chance to see science demonstrations in different stands. There we showed them some characteristics of light and its application. We explained polarization by using two polarizers and allowing the students to cross them or to move them freely. We made a photoelasticity demonstration, with two crossed polarizers, we told them to add a transparent medium between both and they could see the effect of the material on light. They could also see refraction and reflection, with a glass of water and a coin we explained them the phenomenon of the total internal reflection and the critical angle. We cloaked the coin while it was under the glass, in air, and show them how depending on the angle of observation you can see it or not. Diffraction demonstration were also developed, we used diffraction gratings and lasers of different wavelength to make clear the dependence of the angle of the diffraction orders with that parameter. We had a model of the human eye and lenses to simulate image formation and to let them see the effect of myopia and hyperopia and how to correct them using lenses.
Scientific competitions
Khet tournament:
This tournament has not been celebrated yet, however, a Khet tournament in “Nou Café del Carmen”, a popular bar of Castellón, will be celebrated next February. Khet is a chess-like abstract strategy board game using lasers. Players get use to laser reflection and laser split in two beam by means of beam splitters. We will give a Spanish ham for the winner and maybe we will add another prize for the finalist. It is also important to notice that this year we have added the “Nou Café del Carmen” as a place to organize our activities and give diffusion to them.
GOC QUIZ:
15th of December we made a quiz competition in a famous bar of Castellón called “Nou Café del Carmen” with questions related with physics and optics, among many other issues. A set of funny and curious questions were prepared for this event. There were different types of queries, true or false, questions to join between multiple options and many more. Most of the science activities are only focus to students or people normally involved in science. However, with this activity, we want to reach to all age ranges and social status. Moreover we explain the activities in science that occurs in the city and how can they be involved in these activities. The activity reached up to 25 people, and the people from the bar offered us to add a dinner at their place as a prize in the next edition of the GOC-QUIZ. They ask us to organize the quiz more times instead of just once per year, in that sense we do believe that it is important to continue working and improving this kind of activity where not only students but everyone get involved in science in a funny way. And, of course, at the end of the night the winners received the prize they deserved, a Spanish ham bought thanks to the grant received, and that also helps to make people come and be interested in our activities.
Astronomical observations for general public
On 9th May of 2016 Castellón YM Section organized an observation of the transit of Mercury. To let people know about this activity we published it on our Facebook page (Group of Optics Castellón). For the event we bought material for the telescope. The day was cloudy and it was difficult to observe the event, however, finally we were able to observe the phenomenon.
Also we could take of advantage of the event to give information about the optics of a telescope, the planetary movement and several curious science facts that entertained the assistants. Besides, the EPS banner and the purpose of the organisation as well as the purpose of the student chapter were explained.
As the telescope was not available the last months we couldn’t offer the star party, however now we can use it and we are going to do the activity shortly. The plan is to go to a village close to our city where the sky is optimum for doing the observation of several celestial bodies. Also, we are trying to find the best date to be able to see the maximum and to make everybody enjoy the night without freezing.
Finally, it should be said that apart from the activities cited here, in other activities like visiting high schools or schools, we explain the basics of a telescope and how it is possible to observe objects that are so far away. In this sense, we tell the students to join us in our chapter activities by coming to the activities described above.
Seminars on membrane technology
In this activity, we have organized seminars on thermoplasmonics and its novel applications, with particular emphasis to seawater desalination and membrane technology.
The technological applications related to the excitation of localized surface plasmon modes have originated the emerging field of plasmonics. Among the various technological capabilities of plasmonics, those related to thermoplasmonics are particularly promising. Thermoplasmonics, i.e. the Joule heating associated to optically resonant plasmonic excitations in metal nanoparticles, is based on the control by means of light source of nanoscale thermal hotspots.
The most important concepts in nanotechnology and nanoscience have been clarified in a first seminar by dr. Marco Alfano, who described the impact of nanomaterials in technology in different fields. The synthesis of nanomaterials and nanoparticles has been also included in the discussion.
In a following seminar, Dr. Antonio Politano has explained the mechanisms of the first prototype of a system for membrane distillation for seawater desalination exploiting thermoplasmonic effects using nanomaterials as nanofillers in membranes. This is the result of a collaboration among physicists, chemists and chemical engineers of our University.
During this talk, it has been demonstrated how thermoplasmonics can be used as a viable and effective tool for improving the efficiency of membrane distillation to produce desalted water at high recovery factor and relatively low energy input.
The problem of the production of desalted water via seawater desalination is becoming remarkable since the number of countries suffering water scarcity problem has increased significantly in the last decades, due to the steadily demographic expansion and the amplified demand for water in industrial activities, in agriculture and for municipal purposes.
Particular attention has been dedicated to the attempt to improve the interaction with other departments. This is beneficial for our EPS-YM section, since we find a lot of interest toward thermoplasmonics from chemical engineers in our university. We find different contact points with young researchers in membrane technology.
In the seminar on thermoplasmonics, the state of the art has been presented, with attention on the various aspects: the characteristics of thermoplasmonics and the use of nanoscale thermal hotspots in various fields.
Seminars have been attended by about 30 students, coming from Physics, Materials Science and Chemical Engineering.
After the seminars, a discussion with students about the prospect of applied research on advanced materials has been done, under the coordination of prof. Chiarello, associate professor of Applied Physics.