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A YBCO superconductor for outreach

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Leiden_RINO_YBCO_01When the package arrived from Germany, we immediately knew what was inside. We eagerly, but carefully, opened the package to find inside what we had been hoping for. A coated YBCO superconductor, larger than any we had previously used. Naturally, the first thing we did was to fill a container with liquid nitrogen to test it. Once the superconductor was cooled to cryogenic temperatures, we were not disappointed. The magnet floating above it was more stable and could be mounted on a greater distance from the superconductor compared to previously used superconductors. Furthermore, the superconductor itself is shielded from the heat of the air around it, allowing it to be lifted out of the liquid nitrogen for a longer period of time.

Since the superconductor arrived we have visited many high schools in the Netherlands. There we found that the advantages of this superconductor as described above helped us to fascinated the students even more. With this new superconductor, we can properly demonstrate the levitating magnet, even to the students in the back of the class!

Most of our experiments are based on
elementary science, which the students themselves can understand. Therefore, they don’t expect us to show them something that baffles most Physicists. With this experiment we try to explain to students that Physics is not finished yet, and that still a lot of research has to be done to fully understand the world around us. Using this new durable superconductor, we have already sparked enthusiasm in hundreds of students, and will continue to do so for many years to come.

Sleights of mind

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SofM_Valladolid__02Within the framework of the “International Year of the Light” the Valladolid YM Section Physics League organized a talk about visual perception and sleights of mind. We invited to neuroscientist Dra. Susana Martinez- Conde, cofounder of the exciting new discipline of NeuroMagic and also member of the Magic Castle, Magic Circle, International Brotherhood of Magicians, and the Society of American Magicians.

Magic tricks work because humans have a hardwired process of attention and awareness that is hackable. By understanding how magicians hack our brains, we can better understand how the same cognitive tricks are at work in advertising strategy, business negotiations, and all varieties of interpersonal relations. When we understand how magic works in the mind of the spectator we will have unveiled the neural bases of consciousness itself. The idea was approach the neuroscience to students and general public in a fun and accessible way.

This talk appeared on the local news programme. A reporter filmed a small part of the talk and a small interview to a Physics League member.

Before the talk, we carried out some experiments in the hall of the College of Science, some tricks that are easily explained with physical laws, like:

  • Burning hands, a mixture of water, soap and hairspray allows us to burn our hands without damage due to the Leidenfrost effect.
  • Bending spoons: The superpower of bending metal by just touching it is demystified. A gallium spoon looks like a normal kitchen spoon but it melts at 28 ºC being easily bent in our hands.
  • Bed of nails: People felt like ‘fakirs’ over this ‘comfortable’ bed of nails. The attendees were invited to prove this and other experiments.

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Lab tour following FUNlight

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2015_Copenhagen_DTU_FUNLight_01The Copenhagen DTU YM Section helped with arranging a talk, funded by the OSA student chapter and the Department of Photonics, named FUNlight. FUNlight served as an informal lecture in which bachelor students were invited to get a closer look at research being done at the department, with subsequent free food and beverages. An oral presentation was made by Kresten Yvind, group leader of Nanophotonic Devices, who talked about Nano lasers and tunable MEMS lasers for OCT applications.
Directly following the FUNlight talk, students were given the opportunity for a lab tour both by the presenter as well as two EPS members: Ivan-Lazar Bundalo and Simone Gaiarin. They were thus given the opportunity to observe how cutting edge research equipment from different fields can actually look like in practice. The students, numbering around 20 people, were split in 3 groups and taken to 4 different labs from the fields:

  • Optical chips (interconnects)
  • Plastic fiber drawing tower
  • Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) fabrication and testing
  • High-speed optical communications

In drawing tower lab students were introduced to the whole process of making plastic optical fibers (step index and microstructured). They could see different stages of fiber fabrication as well as most common problems related to that technology and the research focus areas. In FBG lab they were shown how phase mask technique can be used with UV laser light to make FBGs in microstructured fibers. Further on, they have been shown the principle of how fiber optic strain, humidity and temperature sensors work.

The high-speed optical communication lab is mostly focused on system type of experiments using a combination of stock fiber and newly developed specialty fibers acquired from OFS Fitel Denmark and NTT Photonics Laboratories. The basics of long-reach optical communication and imperfections causing problems in transmission systems were explained.

Optics at your School and Open Week @UA

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2015_Aveiro_Scho01The Aveiro YM Section realized an activity for Schools divided in two events: visits to schools in Aveiro region and the participation in the Week of Science at the University of Aveiro. This was what we have done and we keep doing nowadays.

First, we have visited a high school in Águeda (Aveiro) and presented some Physics concepts together with experimental demonstrations. The students targeted were from the 11st grade and shown great interest in the experiments and greatly thanked our visit. Contrary to some cases, these students really got involved in the activities and due to that we think they have learned many things. We considered this a very fruitful visit, were we gained also experience in presenting for large audiences.

We have also participated in the Week of Science at the University of Aveiro, where we organized a great event for more than 10 schools, which visited us. In total, we reached more than 300 students from different levels. During one week, we have organized 6 sessions, each one having about 50 students. Students came from schools from all Aveiro region. In these sessions, we have presented many Physics concepts, both theoretically and experimentally. The students participated in the experiments themselves and have shown great interest in everything. We consider this an excellent activity, which we intend to repeat this year with more experiments.

We highlight that all members of our Section participated in the sessions and this was also good for the strength of the Section.

Meanwhile, we plan to continue visits to schools.

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DOFFI Conference 2015

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2015_Buda_DOFFI03The Budapest YM Section took part in organizing a Conference to Hungarian PHD students.
The DOFFI Conference gave Physics PhD students from Hungary a chance to present their research and in return, gain an insight about the work being carried out by fellow students. Through a relaxed and friendly environment, it also gave attendees a chance to network with academics and students to create and strengthen professional relationships.
The three­day event (11-14 June 2015) was split into sessions which were chaired by top Hungarian academics in the field. Student presenters of the sessions had the opportunity to receive feedback from an assigned discussant and the audience. The sessions were organized as the following:
A presenter gave a presentation of their own paper (20 minutes).
A discussant gave a short critical analysis of the presenter’s work (5 minutes). A session led by a session leader followed (10 Minutes).
All of the audience was given the opportunity to present their work in a poster. This took place during the whole of the conference.
The PHD students also participated in daily plenary lectures with current research topics (for example gravity waves or the Higgs­Boson).
Several physicist employing companies presented themselves to offer different jobs. We organised a forum discussions on issues affecting the physicist community.
We hope that the participant learned a lot, and got to know each other.

Webpage with abstracts, pictures and program:
http://doffi.elte.hu/

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XV Workshop for young researchers in the field of statistical physics and condensed matter theory

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2015_Lviv_Work_03The 15th Workshop and Award for young researchers in the field of statistical physics and condensed matter theory supported by EPS Young Minds project was held in Lviv at the Institute for Condensed Matter Physics on June 4–5, 2015. Since this year is announced as the International Year of Light and Light-Based Technologies, the event was dedicated to the 115th anniversary of Olexander Smakula (1900–1983), a famous Ukrainian physicist who is known for the invention of anti-reflective lens coatings based on optical interference.

Five invited lectures were given during the Workshop. In particular, the well-known Ukrainian physicist who studies the optical problems, Leonid Yatsenko presented his overview devoted to the application of light properties to the manipulation of small particles. A special talk about personal and scientific life of Olexander Smakula was given by Svitlana Apunevych. Three other speakers also presented enthusiastic lectures on other directions of modern statistical physics.

Young researchers in statistical physics and condensed matter theory had an opportunity to present their own results during the Workshop. Two of them – Khrystyna Haydukivska and Andrij Kuzmak – were awarded for the best presentations by Special Individual Awards. Four other young participants – Vasyl’ Vasyuta, Iryna Bzovska, Maryana Krasnytska and Kyrylo Snizhko – were distinguished by the Competition Committee as the most promising ones. In general, 19 young researchers not only from Lviv, but from Odesa, Dnipropetrovs’k, Kyiv – took part in the event.

Besides the official part, many cultural activities were organized, including city sightseeing excursion, evening beer-party and picnic. As usual, the Workshop gave a great chance to young and their more experienced colleagues to get in touch, to discuss interesting topics and to enrich scientific connections in friendly atmosphere.

Iryna Zahladko, the president of ICMP Young Minds Section in Lviv, gave a special presentation to familiarize the audience with the section’s activities and the general scope of EPS Young Minds project.

FacebookThe photos related to the event can be found on the group of our section on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=oa.777221795727664&type=1

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Bilateral section meeting with Glasgow University student chapter

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2015_SCOPE_Bilateral_02On July 6th 2015, SCOPE (the Strathclyde Student Community for Optics & Photonics Engineering) came together with an OSA Student Chapter from Glasgow University, newly founded this year, for a first interchapter meeting and social night.
The event was hosted in the physics common room at Glasgow University. Food and drink was provided jointly by the Glasgow University Chapter as well as SCOPE ranging from pizza and beer to cake and juices. In total a number of about 25 people attended the evening with around 10 students joining us from Strathclyde University. Although many of these were full SCOPE members already, this was still a very good opportunity for recruitment for both the Glasgow University chapter, whose first event it was, and us to engage those students that had not joined our societies yet.
After dinner, the evening continued with a short, but cleverly designed quiz on light-related questions from physics, music and other categories, organized by the Glasgow University Chapter, as well as some socializing allowing the members of both chapters to get to know each other and talk about their respective research activities. For us, as the committee, it also provided an opportunity to exchange experiences with our chapters so far and discuss ideas for future events and potential future collaborations.
Overall, we received positive feedback from the people attending and have planned to repeat such a bilateral meeting with the Glasgow University OSA Chapter in due time. The EPS funding we received was used to provide subway travel for our members to the venue as well as our share of food and drink for the evening.
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Specialized talk

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This year in May the Konstanz jDPG-YM Section organized a specialized talk where we invited Prof. Frank Schweitzer, who holds the chair for “Systems Design” at the ETH Zürich. The goal was to offer an insight into a research area which is not present at our faculty.

Prof. Frank Schweitzer is leading an interdisciplinary research team in Zürich, which consists of researchers with different backgrounds from e.g. physics, mathematics, computer science, economics and social science. The research of his group is on a scientific description and modeling of networks, their structure and dynamics. He himself studied physics which made him a perfect fit for our event.

The title of his talk was “Adaption, stability and control – an application to complex social networks” and treated different topics on which he is conducting research on. He gave an insight into how to model complex networks and their dynamics, showed to us how the intrinsic dynamics form the network’s shape and what characterizes a stable network. Some of these points were picturized by the example of the network “Friendster”, which used to be one of the biggest online social networks, and whose collapse can be simulated by Prof. Frank Schweitzer’s model.

Our guest was especially interested in the students’ questions and research. During the day, many fruitful discussions with students took place and Prof. Frank Schweitzer showed a great interest in answering all the questions and giving an insight into his research. After the talk, a little group of 8 students went for dinner with him, where even more discussions on topics other than his research took place, e.g. he gave advices and his opinion on career topics and research in general.

The talk was integrated into the weekly physics colloquium. This was an excellent framework for reaching professors, post-docs and Ph.D.-candidates who more or less regularly visit the colloquium but also to motivate bachelor- and master-students to participate on the colloquium and get insight on research topics outside the University of Konstanz. Normally students feel a little bit afraid to participate on the colloquium because they worry not to understand the talk. The students’ feedback was very positive so we hope that they will participate on other specialized talks in the framework of the physics colloquium or other events.

The talk was visited by more people than expected. The feedback also from the professors was very positive, hence we see a demand for a proceeding.

4th YM Meeting 2015

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3rd Young Minds Leadership Meeting Paris

ICFOOn 29-30 May 2015, the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) in Barcelona hosted the 4th EPS Young Minds Leadership Meeting. 22 YM Sections took part to the event, representing 12 countries all around Europe.
All the Section had the opportunity to present their activities. The Physics League, YM Section of the University of Valladolid in Spain, won the 2015 Best YM Activity Award with an amazing outreach show on Physics and Superpowers. This year the price was sponsored for its first time by the Euro Physics Letters (EPL).
ICFO was elected like one of the best place where such event can happen during the International Year of Light. Moreover, the institute offered a enviable rose of invited speaker that the young scientists had the opportunity to hear. Romain Quidant, leader of the Plasmon Nano-Optics Group, was invited to give a talk titled “Nano-Optics: When light gets us into the nanoworld”. Niek van Hulst, leader of the Molecular Nanophotonics group, gave an overview on the research made at ICFO by more than 20 research groups, bring the Institute to be one of the leading research centers in optics in the world. Finally Lydia Sanmarti-Vila, leader of the Knowledge & Technology Transfer Department, introduced all the institute outreach project aimed to bring photonics closer to the society.

The EPS activities had been presented by two interesting talks. A plenary one from Christophe Rossel, president of EPS, who gave through his own story a point of view on the relations between Physics and Society. And David Lee, the EPS Secretary General, who gave a talk about “The European Physics Community”, highlighting the importance of the YM project for the society itself, and the increasing need of interaction with European initiatives involved in policies for research.
Looking at the future, YM aims to realize activities for development countries. Lorenzo Giorgi, executive director Liter of Light Italy, and Barbara Capone, C.E.O. and project leader of the Sunshine 4 Palestine, introduced the YM members to the world of physics for development showing how the physicist work can be addressed to help needy communities.

Here you can find the meeting material:

Lviv Days of Light

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Lviv_Days_Light__09ICTP Young Minds section together with Ivan Franko National University of Lviv held the “Lviv Days of Light” in May 16-17, 2015. The event consisted of three parts: lecturing part, experimental part and entertaining part. The role of light in art, the nature of light and the application of optics in everyday life were discussed during the presentations. Interesting light phenomena, namely: interference, diffraction, polarization, luminescence etc. – were demonstrated later. Finally, everybody had an opportunity to draw a picture using luminous paints and to observe the beautiful effect afterwards under the UV light.

The program of the activities was the following:
16 May:

  1. Popular scientific talk about the role of light in art, given by Victoria Boyarko-Dolzhenko from the Lviv Academy of Art;
  2. Everybody (children of all ages!) had an opportunity to draw a picture using the luminous paints;

17 May:

  1. Popular lecture about the role of light and its different sources was provided by Vitaly Vistovskyy from the Department of Experimental Physics (Ivan Franko National University of Lviv);
  2. Fascinating optical experiments demonstrating the physical properties of light were provided by Igor Pashuk and Andrij Zhyshkovych from the Department of Experimental Physics (Ivan Franko National University of Lviv);
  3. Exhibition of luminous drawings including a number of paintings created by lviv artist Oksana Romanova.

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