School for Young Physicists

Posted on 20/12/201520/01/2016 by YM Webmaster

For the sixth year, a monthly event has been taking place in the Department of Physics and Mathematics of the University of Latvia – it is the School for Young Physicists. Each time, around 200 high school students from all of Latvia gather to explore a topic of physics that is generally not discussed in the school curriculum.

The activities start with bachelor, masters or doctorate level students explaining the monthly topic in an entertaining manner in two popular lectures. The emphasis is placed on introducing the basic concepts in an easy to understand way, while also trying to expand on the subjects covered in school and giving real world examples.
Thereafter, the attendants are tasked to conduct an experiment that shows how things discussed in the lectures appear in reality. The experiments are designed to differ from those done in school physics lessons. For example, in a session about optical waves, the students measured the amount of pixels on their phone screens by using laser diffraction and later compared the results to the information available about their phone online.

Lastly, a professional in the area of the month’s subject is invited to give a more in depth story about how the topics discussed are relevant in his or her field of expertise. This shows students the different possible career prospects associated with natural and technical sciences as well as giving them some insight in more contemporary issues that people are dealing with in these fields.
Because the event lasts five hours, students take breaks after each activity, in which they can stretch their feet and refresh themselves with a cup of tea and the food provided. Every time we prepare various types of sandwiches with cheese, sausage, vegetables etc. and afterwards some cookies and chocolate.

A competitive spirit among the students is maintained by organizing contests and giving away prizes. After the popular lectures, tests are handed out to students. Their scores are gathered up and the best ones are awarded. Furthermore, a contest among schools is held, where the test scores of top students of that school are tallied up as well as points earned from completing home assignments given after each session. These home assignments usually involve exploring the topic discussed in everyday situations and filming it. At the end of the season, the school with the most points receives the honorable School Cup and the students some bigger prizes than the ones usually handed out.

In the past year, topics such as rotational mechanics, forensic science, biophysics and optics have been covered. Experimental highlights have been the aforementioned pixel measuring with light diffraction as well as solving a crime by inspecting a set up crime scene for clues. As for the professional lecturers, notable examples are a professional physicist working in forensics giving a lecture on his work and a high standing professor introducing high school students to the world of quantum physics.
[nggallery id=65]

Optical tournament

Posted on 17/12/201511/01/2016 by YM Webmaster

Thanks to the IYL Young Minds Grant the GOC YM Section created an optical tournament where students from a High School enjoyed with the first contact with the light science. Public learned about general concepts of optics such as reflection, transmission, light guides, fluorescence and absorption and they did it in a funny way. More details and pictures can be found in the section webpage.

It was a succesful event that took place on Thursday 17th of Desember at the gym of the Torreblanca High School. We started at 8:30h in the morning and we finished at 15:00h and we performed the different games with more than 100 pupils of the High School.

As planned, the tournament consisted in different separated events where participants had to overcome different tests. The participants were organized in groups. Each group stayed 10 minutes at each stage. After this time, the groups had to rotate between all the different stages until each one has passed one time per stage. There was a minimum and maximum punctuation for each stage. Depending on the group performance they obtained a determinate number of points. At the end of the day, the group of students with a higher score received a christmas price.

Funds were used to buy the materials needed to perform the optical contest. We bought laser sources, mirrors, optical materials to build optical puzzles (polarizers, gratins, sensors), an smoking machine, metallic basis in order to build the optical golf and the laser maze. Also, some of the budget was spent in buying little prizes for the winners of the contest. At last, a little part of the budget was spent in the trip to the high-school in the area near our city in order to perform the contest.

Now that we have all activities prepared and all material we need, we will repeat the contest with the high schools that demand it and also in other context.

Cycle of seminars on plasmon research and plasmonic devices

Posted on 15/12/201515/01/2016 by YM Webmaster

The Calabria YM Section realized a cycle of seminars addressed to undergraduate students:

Two-dimensional materials from graphene to “beyond graphene” and their plasmonic modes (Prof. Anna Cupolillo with an introduction by prof. Gennaro Chiarello);
When plasmonics meet Terahertz technology (Dr. Antonio Politano).

The emergence of two-dimensional materials has been discussed. In particular, prof. Cupolillo introduced the groundbreaking impact of graphene on condensed-matter physics and the pitfalls of graphene-based devices. The necessity of going beyond graphene has been clarified. The attention was focused on phosphorene, also in consideration of the recent success of experiments carried out on our department on this material. After a detailed introduction on the two-dimensional atlas of advanced materials, plasmons have been introduced with their peculiarities in these materials.

In the seminar on Terahertz technology, the state of the art has been presented, with attention on the various aspects: the characteristics of the Terahertz radiation, the use of plasma waves to detect Terahertz radiation and the application in technology. It has been clarified that THz radiation has no endangering effects on human beings and enables higher contrast for “soft matter” than x-rays. The excitations of plasmons inside the active channel of nano-transistors devised for Terahertz detection has been introduced. The plasma-wave detection mechanism is just the most promising mechanism for introducing Terahertz technology in daily life.
Plasma-wave-based THz detectors open new possibilities of construction of real-time THz imaging systems. Most plastics, textiles and paper are nearly transparent for THz radiation. Therefore, further application fields are industrial quality inspection control, customs inspection and security screening of persons. Imaging experiments taken on 10 ms have been presented, to demonstrate the feasibility to use Terahertz photodetectors as body scanner, instead of the X-rays, which are ionizing radiation, which can be harmful for human health.
In general, 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 two-dimensional materials from mechanical engineers in our university. We find different contact points with young researchers in nanomechanics.
Seminars have been attended by about 35 students, coming from Physics, Materials Science and Mechanical 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.

[nggallery id=40]

Optical Workshop

Posted on 09/12/201511/01/2016 by YM Webmaster

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 teachers from different high schools requested our workshops also for this year 2015 because the students enjoyed them. This year we have only visited the Puerto de Sagunto town (last 2nd March) and a high school near to the university (last 22nd April). However we have already planned visiting Morella (23rd October), Vinaroz (26th October), Sagunto (9th November), and Vila-Real (16th November). We have some new material for improve our explanations, so we hope students learn more and enjoy very much!

How does fundamental research work?

Posted on 08/12/201503/05/2016 by YM Webmaster

This year, the Erlangen MPL YM Section organized three school outreach events. On July 27 we had the first school outreach event with 23 students from the Gymnasium Fridericianum in Erlangen. This was followed by a similar event on August 20 with 18 students from different local schools. Finally, on December 8, we hold our school outreach event for 15 winners of the German youth science competition “Jugend forscht” who were visiting our home institute.
Many people are fascinated by and interested in fundamental research. However, only a few have a realistic picture of how science really works. With our school outreach events we want to convey a realistic picture of what it means to do fundamental research and why it is of importance. To do so, we first give an overview of the organization of our home institute, the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, and then give an insight of our daily business as researchers. We answer questions like: How do researchers get new ideas? What steps are necessary to conduct an experiment? What problems do usually occur? How do researchers make other aware of their findings? We try to share our real-life experiences from our scientific work in the field of optics. This first part is followed by a demonstration experiment that relates to a current research topic in optics. Currently, we have set up an experiment to make single molecules visible. Another experiments let the audience experience actual quantum fluctuations. The experiment are accompanied by an interesting introduction to the physics involved and an explanation of the observations. In addition, we usually screen a short movie that explains (free-space continuous variable) quantum key distribution, a current research topic at our institute. Members of our chapter answer questions after the movie. When the school outreach event takes place at our home institute, we also offer the participants a tour through our labs.
By talking about a topic beyond the regular curriculum, we try to fascinate the high-school students and infect them with our passion for optics. Moreover, we emphasize the impact of optical technology in the present and future. In addition, we want to motivate young people to study science, in particular optics, and later on become part of the scientific community. Due to the personal experience of the presenters and the different styles of presentation during the events, we usually raise a lot of interest and questions among the audience. We plan to continue this successful series of school outreach events also in 2016.

[nggallery id=13]

Science Conspiracy Mythbusters 2015

Posted on 01/12/201523/07/2016 by YM Webmaster

The principal motivation for Mythbusters project was to demonstrate that lots of widely spread information based on interpretation of various physical phenomena and technological advances
are misguiding and in many cases not even completely true.
But since most of these claims exploit the scientific terminology while using purely non-scientific methods, it may seem trustworthy. This confusion might lead to lowering the trust of scientific
work accuracy and moreover induce the panic among the general public.

In order to dispel these fears we prepared an informal seminar to discuss one of the popular video about the so-called connection between the research conducted at the Large Hadron Collider in
CERN and its consequences on increasing number of recent natural disasters, such as infamous earthquake in Nepal. The reason behind choosing topic of research in CERN is due to the fact,
that many of us do their study there.

During the seminar this particular video was screened, accompanied by our presentation about mentioned misused physical phenomena together with their correct explanation. For that reason,
we also prepared the subtitles both in Czech and English.

This event turned out to be quite popular among the audience, consisting mostly of young students of our faculty. It took place during the “Faculty Open Night” (November 2, 2015), an evening
where research done at our institution is presented among students and general public. We decided to repeat this screening three times during the evening due to the huge demand.

During each presentation, the conference room was fully occupied. In total, there was 75 participants which exceeded our initial expectations. According to the feed-back, students enjoyed
such activity and lots of them expressed the interest in similar screening. We are considering organising another screening focused on different topic.

[nggallery id=1]

Scientific Cinema

Posted on 15/11/201504/01/2016 by YM Webmaster

The Erlangen MPL YM Section organized a social evening for a screening of the documentary feature “That’s the story”, which shows an interview with the Nobel laureate Prof. Roy J. Glauber about his time at the Manhattan Project.

Professor Glauber is the last living scientist from the theory division of the Manhatten Project at Los Alamos. In his interview he gives first-hand information on the daily life at Los Alomos, the scientific team there and its work, the test of the first nuclear weapon (Trinity test), the bombing of Japan and the political aftermath of the project. We invited Prof. Latorre, the producer of the documentary to the Max-Planck-Institute at November 13 to share the documentary with us. The screening was followed by an open discussion, for which we invited two experts from politic science and history. The first one was Wolfram Ridder from the institute of politic science at the FAU and the second one was PD Dr. Stephan Geier, who did his doctoral thesis about the nuclear weapons nonproliferation treaty. Stephan Geier is currently at the University of Warwick and therefore participated via skype. A lively and controversy discussion among the three invited guests as well as with the audience took place about ethic issues of science and the responsibility of scientists. After the discussion, we provided a buffet, where people had the opportunity to continue their discussion on the topic. The event was a great success as approximately 80 people were attending it.

[nggallery id=6]

General public outreach

Posted on 07/11/201507/01/2016 by YM Webmaster

Solar observation:
We panned to move to the city center (city hall square) in order to offer any passerby the opportunity to observe the eclipse. We printed and buy all the needed staff for the observation but unfortunately it was cloudy and raining and we could not observe the sky. We have kept all and we have planned to do a solar observation another day without eclipse.

Cicle of Scientific cinema:

After the great reception we had last year, we celebrated again our yearly Scientific Cinema Series. Considering the feedback we gathered from the previous edition, we selected a new list of open titles to bring scientific discussion to the community.
In this occasion we projected four different movies, ranging from science-fiction (Solaris, by Andrei
Tarkovski, based on the novel by Stanislaw Lem) to historical movies (Copenhagen, starring Daniel Craig in the role of Werner Heisenberg) about science discoveries and even one documentary about the life of Stephen Hawking, taking advantage of the premiere of his biopic.
During those projections we reached a total public of about two hundred people from both the university community and also the local people from Castellón. We also appeared on the local news and the university bulletin, provided that this is a unique initiative that merges both art and science.
At the end of every projection we promoted a debate based on the content of the different movies. Those debates were a huge success, as everyone was interested in discussing the different aspects about each film. For example, after the projection of Copenhagen, we had a delightful conversation about the boundaries of morality, science and their relation to historical moments, were all those matters get kind of blurry due to international tension.
We also used the Cinema Series as a platform to inform about our other outreach activities. As this provided great benefits, we plan to continue with the cinema series on the future. We think that it is a very good way to disseminate science in a relaxed ambient, and also we can take advantage of the platform to inform people about our activities.

Scary Physics

Posted on 01/11/201504/01/2016 by YM Webmaster

As Halloween is becoming a feast day with more followers in Spain and other European countries, “Physics League” has developed an educative theater play to show the ‘more terrific’ side of Physics in an environment of well-known horror films. The structure of this play and all the experiments were the following:

A scary introduction. The Joker and Samara (the girl of The Ring), presenters, introduced five Physics students who got lost during a strong storm and discovered an abandoned house. Joker and Samara explained all the experiments performed after each scene is finished.
Ouija games. The kids were welcomed by the Cheshire cat (performed with luminescent and phosphorescent paintings) who appeared other times during the play. The five kids discovered an Ouija game and they decided to play. The pointer moved alone through a big board (using magnets). Then, a ghost apparition occurred (“Pepper’s ghost” effect with a projector and a certain cloth) and Samara suddenly appeared killing one student.
Saw room. The four remaining kids entered into the clown’s room of Saw movies. This character played with them using torture instruments but knowing that the students will be safe: bed of nails and walking on broken glass. The clown started to play with her fire tornado and she wanted to burn the hands of a student (without damage by Leidenfrost effect) until other student disturbed this game who was finally murdered.
Witch room. Two witches were preparing the eternal youth elixir with liquids and eyes (showing different densities) and with the help of a talking mirror (acetate sheet illuminated from behind or in front). The students needed to heal some injuries and asked for help to the witch who decided to kill one student in order to take her soul (dry ice was added to the elixir).
Laboratory. An “electrical” laboratory was in the show: Doctor Frankenstein, Igor, Joker and Samara played with a faraday cage (radio in an aluminum casing), “creating electricity” with fluorescents and plasma balls, and a Van der Graaff generator. The two remaining students discovered the lab where the Frankenstein’s monster was created using a Tesla coil. The monster killed one student.
Last murder. The last student found a room with messages written with luminescent paintings. The Cheshire cat appeared and killed the last student.
Final. All the characters danced “Thriller” by Michael Jackson and gave sweets.

Audience: 300 viewers.

Comment: Other repetitions of this theater play are planned during 2016. We had a great success of public since more than 400 viewers (estimated by the Science Museum staff) waited for more than one hour in a long queue but could not enter in the Auditorium of the Science Museum of Valladolid due to security reasons.

Participants of the Young Minds Valladolid section: Luis Sánchez-Tejerina, Beatriz González, Verónica González, David Mateos, Verónica Villa, Mónica Vara, Laura Ares, Alejandro Gloriani, Diego González. Furthermore, new members of “Physics League” have been involved in this activity. A total of 20 participants coordinated this activity.

Projects: This activity is supported by EPSYM2015H10 project. We have taken advantage of two experiments previously shown in “Game of Physics” project (EPSYM2015G25) and other three shown in “¿Superpoderes…o física?” project (EPSYM2015G25). We had also obtained funding from OSA and APS associations to perform this educative theater play.

[nggallery id=5]

Discovering the light

Posted on 31/10/201511/01/2016 by YM Webmaster

The EPS Young Minds Madrid organized and participated to the outreach activities of the workshop “Discovering Light”, where the properties of light are explained by means of interactive workshops. The workshops consist on one of optical and fiber communications, other of fluorescence, ray tracing with phenomena of refraction and reflection, visual optics and color. This interactive activity has been presented to the public in three different occasions and locations:

As part of the International Year of Light activities, on Saturday, October 31st, EPS Young Minds Madrid, with the collaboration of IOSA, presented Discovering Light at La Casa Encendida, a social/cultural center in Madrid. Children aged 8 to 12 years old, as well as their families, attended to at least seven workshops, including educational demonstrations and interactive activities. In addition to the workshops of optical communications, fluorescence, ray tracing, visual optics and color, we also had some optics-based games and tricks to show to the children, such as capture your own shadow on the wall using phosphorescent paint, a ‘water-drop’ microscope, and holographic tricks. We also had thermal imaging cameras courtesy of Alava Ingenieros.
As the activity fell on Halloween, we dressed up as mad scientists. Many of the attendees were also dressed up in spooky Halloween costumes.
A total of around seventy persons attended to the event.
During the Spanish Week of Science, on November 12th, outreach activities for children were held at the Institute of Optics of CSIC (Madrid). Around twenty children had the chance to prove themselves with workshops in basic optics, optical communication and fluorescence, with the tricky laser puzzle and the amazing laser maze.
On 19th and 20th of November IOSA/EPS Young Minds Madrid had the opportunity to collaborate with the programme developed by CSIC: “Ciudad Ciencia”. Ciudad Ciencia (“Science City”, http://www.ciudadciencia.es/) is a programme aimed to bring first hand scientific outreach to Spanish localities far from big urban centers and universities, this time in the Canary island of La Palma, at Los Llanos de Aridane (Santa Cruz de Tenerife). The “Discovering Light” workshops were held there for more than a hundred primary school children and for the general public. People of all ages had the chance to have a practical experience with color, vision, ray tracing, fluorescence and optical communications. This event was recorded by the local press on El Diario.

All the EPS Young Minds Madrid members participated to the organization and were then involved directly in the activities, with what we consider great benefits for our personal experience. We measured ourselves with the organization/management of events and with the contact with the public, which resulted in an enriching positive experience, especially with children (in total more than two hundred), with whom we tried to share our enthusiasm for science.
Since the experience was stimulating and well received by the attendees, EPS Young Minds Madrid will continue with the organization of similar activities and hopefully the planning of new ones.
[nggallery id=39]