One of the main goals of EPS Young Minds project is to connect young scientists among different physics fields. Therefore, Prague section decided to organize students’ colloquiums named Physics Pizza Party: Students 4 students, where young scientists from different universities and research fields presented their research activities. These events prove to be very successful in winter semester in 2016.
Totally, we organized four colloquiums this semester and for the first time half of the speakers were outside our parent faculty. We had one speaker from Faculty of Electrotechnics (Czech Technical University in Prague) and one from Faculty of Mathematics and Physics (Charles University in Prague). Various themes were presented as: study of solid materials using ultrasound and lasers, algorithms in gambling machines, presentation about superfluid helium and about proposed detector for planned particle collider – Future Circular Collider. All contributions were presented by Ph.D. and master students.
For most of invited speakers, it was their first experience to present their research activities in front of the audience which was not familiar with the topic. Despite of this fact, each talk was perfectly prepared, and therefore there was no problem to understand given topic. Each event was scheduled for about 60 minutes, but with discussion during and after presentation, average time of colloquiums was about 90 minutes and even more. According to the speakers it was very rewarding experience for them.
These events were advertised in form of posters, which were placed in school buildings. For the purpose of inviting as many participants as possible, we also advertised it on our social sites, namely Facebook and Twitter. Thanks to this advertisement, our students’ colloquiums had large attendance. Average number of participants was around 30 students per one colloquium.
The Prague EPS Young Minds Section found these colloquiums rewarding, since this style of presentation “students for students” is still very rare in our country and we were one of the first who organized this style of colloquiums. According to the feedback from our participants, we concluded that our colloquiums were successful, since they were very positively rated by participants. Thanks to these positive feedback and high number of participants, we would like to continue with this activity – this is what students in Prague expect as well.