The most challenging activity we have organized to celebrate the International Year of Light 2015 was probably Fisici senza Frontiere @ Futuro Remoto.

Futuro Remoto, the biggest science festival in Naples, took place in Piazza del Plebiscito from October the 16th to the 19th and this year more than 100 students of the Naples Department of Physics were involved, as well as tens of researchers and professors from several institutions (e.g. CNR, INFN, CIRA), for a total of about 140 people. The volunteers covered a wide range of scientific activities (e.g., scientific speed date, several educational talks, more than 10 outreach stands), which made it possible to target a diverse audience. As part of our outreach initiative aimed at the youngest, we organized a Rubik cube competition.
Our rooftop summer party, a recent tradition for the Department of Physics, provided us with a setting to test and showcase the format, albeit on a smaller scale. Results were very encouraging, garnering appreciation and generally positive feedback from the students involved. We chose to follow the adage “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” so we kept the same rules: the fastest solver wins the prize.
According to official sources, about 130.000 people visited Futuro Remoto over the course of its four days. We could thus expose a very large crowd to our activities, at some point even attracting the attention of the Mayor of Naples, Mr. Luigi De Magistris. Even the smallest ones, such as the Rubik’s cube competition, successully managed to attract and fascinate visitors.

This year Young Minds Naples Section has supported the event “Passione Fisica” , 3rd May 2015, at “Città della Scienza”, an interactive science museum in Naples. “Passione Fisica” is a day dedicated to popularization of science, in particular through Physics experiments. The event has seen the collaboration of Physics’ students, researchers and professors of University of Napoli “Federico II” Physics Department, researchers of the Astronomical Observatory of Capodimonte in Naples and high school students. The event was born two years ago as a way to gather funds for the reconstruction of the science museum, which was destroyed by arson. Besides this aspect and, of course, spreading science culture and scientific knowledge, the aim of the event is to realize simple yet curious experiments with everyday materials in order to explain the physical principles beneath them. The event is designed both for adults and children with an interest in science. These experiments are reproducible at home and, most of all, fully interactive. Indeed both adults and children are engaged in discussions and attempts to understand the presented phenomena. This year, our intention has been to expand the range of experiments and physics fields. Creation of a non-Newtonian fluid using water mixed with potato flour in an inflatable pool: this experiment is particularly suitable for children because they can see a completely different behavior of matter, far from what they see in everyday life and, most of all, they can reproduce their own non-Newtonian fluid at home. Generation of plasmas through Microwave oven using simply a candle and a beaker on top of it: the intense electromagnetic field causes a ionization of the air subject to combustion which give rise to a blob of plasma. Measurement of the speed of light using a Microwave oven and a chocolate bar: without rotating the chocolate bar, the intense electromagnetic field melt the chocolate where the field is more intense; measuring the distance between this points and using the standard frequency of the microwave, one can give a rough estimate of the speed of light. Waveguide using a green laser and water: water flowing from a bottle can be used as a waveguide for laser light; if water is twisted using acoustic wave, the effect is even more astonishing.

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On April the 23th took place the Award Cerimony for the contest “Physics Got Talent”. The contest was adressed to young students attending high school in Naples. They had to send a video (max 7 minutes) in which they describe an experiment performed by themselves explaining what they do, what they use and what are the conclusions of their work. The video were download on the facebook page and youtube channel created to increase interest for the event.
We assigned three prizes: two of them chosen by the jury, called the first and second “technical winner”; and another prize for the top rated video on the web (like for Facebook and YouTube) called “popular prize”. The online vote received more 1000 like on the page .
Prizes consisted of didactic sets for the schools. The sets are composed by compasses, electrical circuits, lasers, optical lenses, pendulum, slinky, stopwatches etc.
About 100 students, belonging to the schools who joined the contest, took part to the event.
During the ceremony the videos made by the participants were shown and the students themselves explained better how they performed the experiment, how they built the setup and the reasons who motivated them to join the contest.
These latter short interviews underlined the importance to stimulate curiosity and passion about physics among the younger generation of students. In addition it was an opportunity for students to visit the physics department and know more about young minds project.
The winner was invited to perform their experiment to the event “Passione Fisica” .

Here we report the winners :
Technical prizes:

1. Liceo Cuoco , “Costruzione di un motore elettrico”(“How to made an eletric motor”)
2. Liceo Calamandrei , “Termogiocando” (“Playing with termodinamic”)

Popular prize:
Liceo Suor Orsola Benincasa, “Legge di Stevin” (“Stevin’s Law”)

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