Section Starting

Posted on 16/07/201811/10/2019 by YM Webmaster

The Young Minds section of the University of Liège was created recently (May 2018). During the past months, our group has organized a “get-to-know-us” presentation for physics and space science students (masters, PhD and post-docs). It sparked great interest for the Young Minds activity in the Liège physics community. The objective was also to brainstorm ideas of activities to be organized for the upcoming academic year 2018-2019. This meeting, along with three other group reunions over two weeks, lead us to the idea of a networking event under the theme “Physics and Sport” (see the corresponding document for more details), during which we will test activities we plan using to create an outreach event destined to high school students. It also allowed us to gather motivated PhD students with experience in science outreach event (sci-fi movies analyses, broad audience communication, …) and effectively reinforce the initial team. We have also made contact with a local organization specialized in the field of science popularization at the University of Liège (“Réjouiscience” – http://rejouisciences.uliege.be) and they showed enthusiasm in collaborating with us in the organization of physics outreach events. We committed to participating in the next edition of their “Printemps des Sciences”, a yearly, high-impact science fair week for schools and general public in the Liège area. Members of our team are also dedicating their time to the construction of a website (www.ymliege.uliege.be) and a Facebook page (“YMLiège”) for more visibility. We created a public mail address: youngminds@uliege.be.

Our group takes the opportunity to be part of the Young Minds network very seriously, and we think we are off to a great start. We hope that the aforementioned activities testifiy our motivation for holding physics-related events and for growing the Young Minds network.

Film screening “Kwantumrevolutie”

Posted on 16/07/2018 by YM Webmaster

In our latest event we held a screening of the Flemish documentary Kwantumrevolutie (Quantum Revolution). This documentary narrates the chronological discoveries concerning quantum mechanics, like Thomas Young’s double-slit experiment and Albert Einstein’s Photoelectric effect. The director of this documentary has a Master degree in both the Audiovisual Arts and Physics, which makes him the ideal person to narrate this topic. Since the physics behind all of these surprising experiments is explained clearly and shown intuitively, this movie forms a great introduction to quantum mechanics for those who are not yet familiar with its basic concepts. Moreover, the way these experiments are portrayed in a historical context also makes the documentary enjoyable for scientists who are more well-versed on this subject.

The documentary also focuses on the important role Belgium played in solving these quantum conundrums. The Belgian industrialist Ernest Solvay founded The International Solvay Institutes for Physics and Chemistry and facilitated the famous Solvay Conferences. During these conferences the issue with quanta, atoms, electrons and more, were thoroughly discussed by leading international scientists. The documentary narrates the story of the members of the first conferences and their important findings which have led to the quantum theory as we know it today. Not only does this documentary quench the thirst for historical and scientific knowledge, it also provides a prime example of how interdisciplinary and international collaborations can lead to a brilliant outcome.

In summary, this meticulous portrayal of the history and physical consequences of the quantum theory is an absolute must-see for anyone with an interest in modern physics, and we are proud to have reached a quite international and diverse public made up of members from the whole Science faculty with our screening.

Colloquium “From emergent gravity to the dark universe” by Prof. Erik Verlinde

Posted on 16/07/2018 by YM Webmaster

On the 15th of February 2018, the Antwerp Young Minds section invited Professor Doctor Erik Verlinde to give a colloquium at the University of Antwerp about his work on the theoretical framework of emergent gravity. The main target audience were the students and researchers of the University of Antwerp physics department.

Professor dr. Erik Verlinde is a professor at the University of Amsterdam. His research focuses on the theoretical study of string theory, black holes and cosmology. In 2009, he introduced a theory of entropic gravity (also known as “emergent gravity”) which links the existence of gravity to quantum information theory. In 2011, he received the Spinoza price, one of the most prestigious awards available to Dutch scientists, for his various achievements and contributions to the field of cosmology.

In his talk, professor Verlinde explained that, while observed deviations from Newton’s laws or Einstein’s general relativity are commonly attributed to the presence of dark matter, these deviations can also be due to a change in the way gravity works in these circumstances. He then talked about a new theoretical framework in which gravity emerges from concepts of quantum information theory and discussed several applications of this approach. The colloquium as a whole was a great occasion for students to learn more about dark matter and the cosmological study of gravity, while at the same time providing the researchers of our department with more fundamental insights about professor Verlinde’s theory.

The lecture was followed by a reception, where the audience members and speaker could enjoy a drink and a bite. This also presented our students and researchers with the opportunity to speak with professor Verlinde in an informal setting.

Altogether, the colloquium was a great way for our university’s physics department to start off the second semester of the academic year.

Colloquium “Surprises in the self-assembly of particles” by Prof. Alfons van Blaaderen

Posted on 16/07/2018 by YM Webmaster

On the 13th of December 2017, the Antwerp Young Minds section invited Professor Doctor Alfons van Blaaderen to give a colloquium at the University of Antwerp about his work on the self-assembly of nanoparticles. The main target audience were the students and researchers of the University of Antwerp physics department.

Professor dr. Alfons van Blaaderen is a professor at Utrecht University and the chair of the Soft Condensed Matter group of this university. His research focuses on the study of colloidal model systems and their self-assembly, in order to create, study and develop more advanced materials with special properties. Prof. van Blaaderen developed various new methods to manipulate the self-assembly of colloidal particles and was a pioneer in quantitative 3D real-space microscopic analysis of colloidal systems. In 2011, he was awarded the Peter Debye Prize by the Edmond Hustinx Foundation.

In his talk, professor van Blaaderen explained how self-assembly is a powerful way to create 3D colloidal crystals of metal or semiconductor nanoparticles, and showed us how this method can be used to tailor the properties of the resulting material. He first focused on self-assembly of particles into a spherical confinement, and then talked about how these results could be extended to particles with more complex shapes. The colloquium as a whole was a great occasion for students to be introduced to the field and applications of nanoparticles, while at the same time providing the researchers of our department with more profound insights about professor van Blaaderen’s experimental work.

The colloquium received a good deal of positive comments and feedback from the students and researchers who attended it.

Let’s make fun with science: colors and soap bubbles

Posted on 16/07/2018 by YM Webmaster

The EPS Young Mind Section of Rome was very productive in 2017 with the “Let’s make fun with science: Sun, light and colored shadows” project, aimed at discovering the concepts of light and colors through different experiments. This project has been partially founded by the 2017 Activity Grant and has been described in the last January 2018 Report.
In the first months of 2018, we ideally carried on this journey through the project “Let’s make fun with science: colors and soap bubbles”. In fact, even if apparently they are very simple, soap bubbles are the realization of many physical phenomena all together. First of all, their shape allows to explore the concept of surface tension of liquids. But even more, the colors appearing and disappearing on their surface force to wonder about the nature of light and colors. In particular, a deep understanding of how soap bubbles work requires the knowledge of many concepts related to waves, such as the Sun spectrum, the frequency, the wavelenght, but also interference and diffraction. For this reason, soap bubbles can be used at different levels: to create a fun activity for kids, to make physics students wonder about optics and Sun spectrum, and to give high school teachers a way through which they can explain interference to their students. The EPS Young Minds Section of Rome have tried to develop each of this ways.

We began with kids. During the event “Eyes on the Moon”, hosted by the Physics Department of Roma Tre University on February 23th, we used buckets, dishwashing liquid and straws in order to give children the opportunity to create their own soap bobbles of different sizes and shapes. With older people, including high school students, we organized afteroon activities adding a more detailed explanation of what happens in a soap film drawing optical waves on cardstocks, and using simple spectrometers to show the Sun spectrum. Moreover, with a more selected public, such as high school teachers or adults, we tried to explain what happens with a soap film on a can. In fact, if you try to make a soap film on one side of a can, and try to arrange it vertically, you will see that strips of different color will form. Their colors will alternanate, providing a great way to see, in practice, destructive and constructive interferences of waves.
At the end, the “Let’s make fun with science: colors and soap bubbles” project had more than 300 participants between primary, secondary schools students teachers and general public.

Encouraging networking among undergraduate students

Posted on 16/07/2018 by YM Webmaster

At the beginning of 2018 we felt that we could try to expand the EPS Yound Minds Section of Rome with new members. The “Let’s make room for science” and “Let’s make fun with science” projects – partially founded by the 2017 Activity Grant – were fun and effective for the general public, but they also succeeded in creating interest toward the Section, especially among physics students of Roma Tre University, in Rome. For this reason, we organized at the Mathematics and Physics Department of the University of Roma Tre an opening event, during which the older members of the Section showed the activities we carried out these years. We started by advertising the event through the students’ Facebook pages and the University bulletin boards. Then, the day of the event, we placed some of the exhibits developed by the Section in the astronomical garden of the Mathematics and Physics Department of the University of Roma Tre, the AstroGarden.

In particular, we used the space-time exhibit, which easily attracted the attention of those present simulating the curvature of space-time using a trampoline and different masses. The thermal imager was also used, in order to show the concept of temperature and transformation of energy: even if Physics students should be used to such concept, seeing the thermal footprint they left on a table always creates wonder! Moreover, one of the professors of the Department has lent us some of his experiments concerning electromagnetism, together with solenoids and magnets.
In less than an hour, a fairly large group of people was talking about science, but not only: we talked about the University life, its problems, and all the different activities that could be developed in the near future to help students to create network, and not feel alone. At this point, the president of the Section, Adriana, showed some slides to explain the activities of the Section, inviting everyone to join it. Then, she officially opened the buffet: sandwiches, pizzas and beverages for everyone! And of course, the event could not end without a cake!

The opening event took place in June 2018, and it had more than 20 participants. We plan to organize more events during the year, especially when the University courses will start again. In the meantime, we have already welcomed two new members of the Section!

Atoms about atoms

Posted on 16/07/2018 by YM Webmaster

According to our activity grant we have awarded 490 Euro for visiting 3 villages, organizing summer school, quizzes and building test devices.
We would like to note that because of the Velvet Revolution during March-May in Armenia and not calm situation in our country our plans have changed and we could not complete all of the activities reported in our grant request. Two school visits we will be finished within upcoming months.
However, we have organized the following activities in Armenia:
1. Summer School in Tumanyan village (25.06.2018-30.06.2018 Tumanyan, Lori province): We have organized activities about several topics: mechanical waves, optics, electromagnetic waves. During the classes children had opportunity to get basic knowledge and ask a lot of questions from real life. High school students were from 8th and 9th classes. And we have tried to cover all questions asked by them during the school with experiments prepared in advance.
2. Paper, plastic and glass is not a waste (9 events in Yerevan, Gyumri, Vanadzor, Ashtarak): We have teamed up with “Eco Waste” project and organized cleanups and collected more than 5300 kilograms of paper and 100 kilograms of plastic bottles and sent them to recycling as in Armenia there are huge problems concerning these issues: not all people are well educated and don’t sort trash.

All these events were conducted with a quiz, where our members approached participants and tested the basic knowledge in Physics and Astronomy. Winners got stickers and get acquainted with Yerevan Young Minds activities.
3. We have visited the Byurakan village (40 km far from Yerevan) for demonstrating simple experiments for 8 year old children from Byurakan village. Experiments were simple but the questions were very interesting for us.
Besides outreach event, with SPIE Yerevan chapters, we have involved in organizing committee of 5th International Advanced School on Frontiers in Optics & Photonics, 22-27 June, 2018.
Furthermore, we have awarded for the May Awesome Idea from The Awesome Foundation. Idea was to build equipment for schools with a help of students, which don’t have any practical experience because of universities. We have collaborated with Teach for Armenia and will choose schools located in the most remote parts of our country to visit and to give scientific tool kits consisting of equipment necessary for demonstrations of basic experiments from the textbooks.

We have established official Facebook page, called Yerevan Young Minds and it is already more than 400 followers and our group Science and Innovation has around 200 members. Due to social media we have received lots of invitations for visiting schools. So, we are almost succeeding in our mission to build a strong platform for answering Physics related questions.

School for Young Physicists

Posted on 16/07/2018 by YM Webmaster

One more year for SYP has finished, and the upward trajectory for student interest has steadily held up. In the beginning of the year, we reported record numbers of attendance, and that continued throughout the entire season.

In addition to crowd-pleasing topics we looked at in the first semester, the second semester featured sessions on constructional physics, electronics, solid state physics, food physics and, finally, chaos theory. Highlights from these sessions include building model houses and testing them against shaking to imitate an earthquake and even advanced lectures in chaos theory and solid state physics that touched on master’s level physics, and yet students enjoyed them immensely.

The 3rd School Cup competition also came to a close, and it was essentially a photo-finish. Teams battled for points until the final session, and the winning team beat out their rivals only by one point – to give perspective, the total point count for the winning team was about 300 points. Teams from various schools showed their mettle all year, performing well on tests as well as showing ability in the four creative extra tasks that were given to them. The best teams were also awarded prizes for their hard work.

Additionally to the main sessions, regional sessions in cities were also still held – more than ever. Cities of Valmiera, Ventspils, Rezekne and Liepaja saw numerous sessions take place – and Rezekne even had 7 sessions, which is only two less than in our capital!

All in all, the 8th season of SYP was a resounding success, and we will look to keep building on this success to increase our output and outreach even more, allowing more students to see that physics education can be fun indeed!

This year, our Young Minds section participated in the first ever physics festival in Latvia – an event solely for the popularization of physics and science for the public. Almost all groups that do physics outreach were gathered in the same venue – which means our team was also their. Multiple experiment workshops were set up, and a competition for middle-schoolers also took place. The event was a success, as the amount of visitors from the general public attending went up to a few thousand.

The event was well covered – it garnered enough attention for some TV and radio coverage. Feedback from the public was very positive, and that means this will be no one hit wonder – another festival for physics is in the works for next year, and our section will certainly attend next year as well.

XVIII Workshop and Award for young researchers in the field of statistical physics and condensed matter theory

Posted on 16/07/2018 by YM Webmaster

On June 7-8, 2018, the Institute for Condensed Matter Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Lviv hosted the XVIII Workshop and Award for young researchers in the field of statistical physics and condensed matter theory, which was organized by the Lviv Young Minds Section and supported by the EPS Young Minds Committee.

26 young scientists from Dnipro, Kyiv, Lviv and Sumy had an opportunity to present their own results during the Workshop as well as taking part in the Competition. 5 invited lecturers, leading scientists from Kyiv, Kharkiv, Uzhgorod, Lviv and Warsaw, spoke about physical approaches to non-physical problems, the phenomena in Bose-Einstein condensation of atoms and photons in rarefied gases, stable and metastable states of ferroelectrics with multi-valued potential, thermodynamic properties of liquids in disordered porous media, quantum criticality in metallic systems.

The winner of the first prize of the competition was Vasyl Palchykov (ICMP) for the cycle of works “Self-organization and emergence of structures in complex systems of different nature”. The second prize was given to Galyna Panochko (Ivan Franko National University of Lviv) for the cycle of works “The problem of Bose-polaron in quantum gases”.

In the framework of the competition Roman Ovcharov (Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (KNU)) was noted for a successful scientific start, Olha Mazur (Institute for Physics of Mining Processes of the NAS of Ukraine, Dnipro) – for high-quality presentation of the results and Alina Dvornychenko (Sumy State University, Sumy) – for the best presentation.

According to the best reports within the framework of the workshop, the centre of the Ukrainian Physical Society at the ICMP noted three young scientists – Oksana Dobush and Mariana Krasnytska from the ICMP, Lviv, and Volodymyr Shubnyi from the KNU, Kyiv.

Besides the official part, some cultural activities were organized, including city sightseeing excursion and evening beer-party. As usual, the Workshop gave a great chance to young researchers and their more experienced colleagues to get in touch, to discuss interesting topics and to enrich scientific connections in a friendly atmosphere.
Members of ICMP Young Minds Section in Lviv familiarized the audience with the section’s activities and the general scope of EPS Young Minds Organization.

The total amount of 400 EUR for the “XVIII Workshop and Award for young researchers in the field of statistical physics and condensed matter theory” was distributed as follows:
 54 € for posters and promotional materials;
 67 € for publishing the books of abstracts;
 72 € for personal participant packages (folder with a sticker, pen, notebook, badge);
 23 € for diplomas and certificates for lecturers and participants;
 21 € for small expenses (paper, cartridge refill, whiteboard markers, batteries, etc.) (partly covered);
 12 € for materials for preparing the sightseeing tour (few books);
 148 € for coffee breaks and other informal meetings (partly covered);
 3 € for the bank commission connected to the swift transfer.

The photos related to the event can be found on the site of the event:
http://www.icmp.lviv.ua/konkurs/gallery.html

Students Meeting at the Start of the Semester

Posted on 16/07/2018 by YM Webmaster

Our Prague EPS Young Minds section organized already the fifth Students Meeting at the Start of the Semester, which currently has the status of an established event at the Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering (FNSPE). This was truly demonstrated by the high attendance of an amazing amount of 100 people which increased again, compared to the previous semester. As usual, we invited a speaker who gave a talk on the recent topic in physics. This time we decided to invite young scientist Dr. Vaclav Potocek, who spent two years at Edinburgh University after obtaining his PhD, and is now part of the Quantum information group within the FNSPE, to give a talk on the problem of quantum computers. He introduced the basics of the quantum information theory, then explained the concept of quantum computer and presented recent results, together with the discussion on its possible applications, and future outlook in the field.

The event was advertised on our increasingly popular Facebook profile, on our web pages, and in the form of posters in several buildings of Czech Technical University, Charles University, and the Nuclear Physics Institute. Students and faculty from several universities and institutes came and enjoyed coffee and tea before the lecture and then attended the presentation. During the subsequent discussion, which is in our opinion the key part of the event, they enjoyed refreshments organized by us. During the event, we also advertised other activities organized by the Prague EPS YM section.

This event was generally rated as very good, popular and successful idea. The large attendance, which grows every semester, makes this the most popular single event organized by our EPS YM section and was achieved mainly thanks to a large number of posters that were distributed at the university campuses in Prague and also thanks to our active advertisement at social media. The meeting presents a unique networking opportunity that can connect faculty and students of different ages, fields of study and from different universities. In addition, such an event can be interesting for the public as well, the proof can be the attendance of several high school students at previous meetings. All these reasons prove the popularity and the need for such high-profile talks at our university.