At this year’s Glasgow Science Festival, SCOPE (the Strathclyde Student Community for Optics & Photonics Engineering) organised outreach experiments and workshops for children and adults under the heading “Illuminating the world of light”. Since 2007 the event has grown to be one of the most popular festivals in the United Kingdom, providing a range of science-related events over 2 weeks.
Our group was enjoying two days of fascinating experiences in sharing knowledge with a broad age audience, including children of age 3 up to 60-year old curious onlookers, at a family weekend at the Kelvingrove Museum.
Our three different setups attracted around 200 people, mostly families, who came interested in basic issues of optics and general physics. One of the most attractive parts for the young audience was a 3D glasses workshop. Visitors had the occasion to build their own glasses and play with them watching a short 3D movie as well as 3D pictures. We further took up the challenge of explaining to both parents and children the physics behind IMAX cinema, using a demonstration of polarization of white light with professional 3D glasses and polarising filters from an OSA Optics Suitcase. Apart from learning, children had fun with cutting and gluing their own glasses which they could then take home.
On the other side of the desk we ran a game where visitors had to guess in which applications or everyday items lasers are used (by picking out the correct pictures with brief descriptions on the back of the cards). Each time before starting the game, a small experiment was performed to explain to the audience what the difference between regular light (from a torch) and laser light is. All winners were granted funny stickers for their good answers. Few of the cards included tricky examples and most of the adults, even people working in science, found our game very educational and we received positive feedback from them.
For those more interested in medical physics, we prepared a demonstration illustrating how the human eye works. Two laser pointers and a huge lens borrowed from the Institute of Photonics at Strathclyde University were used to show how the laser light penetrates the human eyeball and where the right place is for their intersection, so that the image received by the eye has the proper sharpness. The audience was following the light beams coming from the other side of the lens using a piece of paper. After the hands-on experiment many children stayed to listen to a short talk about the internal structure of the eye.
All experiments were handled with kind assistance from the coordinators of the Science Festival as well as volunteers from the University of Strathclyde’s Physics Department and the Institute of Photonics.
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