KHET TOURNAMENT
20th of February the GOC YM Section celebrated a Khet tournament in “El Café dels Artistes”, a popular bar of Castellón.
Khet is a chess-like abstract strategy board game using lasers. Players get use to laser reflection and laser split in two beam by means of beam splitters.
During the afternoon, people had around 2 hours to practice and learn playing Khet. We explained them the rules and how the laser reflects to the mirrors. When they got used to the rules, the tournament of random pairs started. We had 5 Khet games, so we made several rounds and the tournaent lasted around three hours.
All participants started the night with the expectation of being able to take home the trophy, however, soon they began to break their hopes with the first defeats.
After three tough rounds, four players were beaten in the final rounds in order to stand as winner. At the end, the defensive style of Sergio, who had left all his opponents misplaced throughout the evening, succumbed to the relentless attack of Paco, who won the prize after a night of relentless duels. No doubt, the great physical and mental preparation paid off and Paco managed to win as champion.
But both deserved a price, so we gave two awards. A backpack with pen, pencil, Universitat Jaume I information, and a 4GB USB to the semifinalist and a Spanish ham for the winner.
The activity was a success and it helped to promote optics around young people. Using the game we had the opportunity to explain basic concepts about lasers and how the light travels. Moreover, since that they we stablished contact with some of the participants that are students of the University Jaume I and one of them became a new member of our section.
GOC QUIZ
26th of November we made a quiz competition in a famous bar of Castellón called “El café dels artistes” (“The artists coffee-bar”) with questions related with physics and optics, among many other issues. A set of funny and curious questions were prepared for this event. There were different types of queries, including musical questions about famous series or films, true or false, questions to join between multiple options and many more.
Most of the science activities are only focus to students or people normally involved in science. However, with this activity, we want to reach to all age ranges and social status. Moreover we explain the activities in science that occurs in the city and how can they be involved in these activities.
PHOTOGRAPHY CONTEST
We organized a photography contest where the participants had to present a photography related to the optics field, with a brief explanation of the phenomenon that they had photographed. We did it via Instagram, with the hashtag #concursogoc and the deadline to present the pictures was 6 of January of 2016. 161 pictures were sent and the best combination of picture and explanation won a submergible camera. The best pictures with the explanation will be exposed at “The artist’s coffee-bar” where there are always art exhibitions and where we usually do the GOC QUIZ.
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