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The power of physics

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2015_Valla_Poter_01The Physics League, Valladolid YM Section, organized an outreach activity in several museums: the Science Science Museum of Valladolid, the Barcial de la Loma (Valladolid) and Íscar (Valladolid).  The aim of this activity is to demystify some of the most common beliefs of pseudo-science. We explain some ‘paranormal’ tricks or “superpowers” that are easily explained with physical laws.

The experiments carried out in this show are:

  • Levitation: We have constructed the same levitating system with steel rods used by ‘yoguis’ in India for levitating above the ground. We explain the equilibrium forces and center of mass.
  • Lenz tube: gravity is evaded when a magnet is dropped through a copper tube. The perturbation of the magnetic field induces currents, with the effect that the magnet falls slower.
  • Creating electricity: a fluorescent is turned on without electrical connections by a hidden plasma sphere.
    The way that electric field induces potential difference in the electrons into the fluorescent is explained.
  • 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.
  • Burning hands: a mixture of water, soap and hairspray allows us to burn our hands without damage due to the Leidenfrost effect.
  • Fire control: A Rubens’ tube shows the modulation of fire caused by “supernatural beings”, which is
    explained by acoustic standing waves in the tube.
  • Telekinesis: at a certain distance, a pile of glasses is destroyed and candles are put out. This superpower lies on an air vortex hidden in the backstage.
  • Duel of strength: the attendance is challenged to prove their strength against members of Physics League. Because of the knowledge of center of mass, our team always wins…
  • Walking through broken glass: We perform the trick of walking through broken glass. This trick is done in
    some societies claiming their powerful minds. We show that is just physics at work!
  • Bed of nails: the control of pain shown by fakirs lying over a bed of nails is also demystified. The relationship between pressure and the surface where it is applied is the basis to understand this “superpower”. We also break a concrete block over a Physics League member lying on this bed.
  • Ghost apparitions: the scariest moment of the show arrives when a mystery girl suddenly appears!
    Thankfully, Ghostbusters go to our rescue, and show us that the apparition is a “Pepper’s Ghost” effect.

The attendance is invited to prove all the experiments.

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Light Research Seminar Day

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BudapestThe Budapest YM Section organized a special seminar to presented current Hungarian light based researches. Recognized scientists from the research industry performed lectures on a variety of topics. The target audience consisted of two parts: pre­ and postgraduate students who would like to find a new research areas and young scientists who would like to get to know each other’s works. The presented wide scale of topics on light based science and technology have an important part in research, ranging from optics to astronomy or biological physics.

­­­­Three presenters from different institutions presented their activities: Fáth Gábor from Morgan Stanley, Rácz Ervin from ELI­ALPS and Patay Gergely from Mediso Medical Imaging Systems.
We asked a lecturer specially to introduce the largest current scientific research project in Hungary, the ELI Attosecond Light Pulse Source (ELI­ALPS) of Szeged. The seminar room was at the ELTE Lagymanyos Campus. The lecturers made 30 minutes long presentations on their research subjects and after the participants asked questions from the lecturer and discussed ideas. We planned to organize a whole day long interesting and high quality seminar on light, but it turned out the timing was unfortunately not too good. Because of the end of the semester and the exam period, we had a little less participants then expected. However, those who were present (participants and lecturers alike) had a very positive experience, one our participants has already successfully applied for a job he heard from one of the presenters, he started to work in that job in the private sector.
We learned from this event that in the future we should look for an alternative date for the seminar, and we should focus more on career opportunities than on thematic research area presentations.

Passione Fisica

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2015_Naples_P__01This year Young Minds Naples Section has supported the event “Passione Fisica” , 3rd May 2015, at “Città della Scienza”, an interactive science museum in Naples. “Passione Fisica” is a day dedicated to popularization of science, in particular through Physics experiments. The event has seen the collaboration of Physics’ students, researchers and professors of University of Napoli “Federico II” Physics Department, researchers of the Astronomical Observatory of Capodimonte in Naples and high school students. The event was born two years ago as a way to gather funds for the reconstruction of the science museum, which was destroyed by arson. Besides this aspect and, of course, spreading science culture and scientific knowledge, the aim of the event is to realize simple yet curious experiments with everyday materials in order to explain the physical principles beneath them. The event is designed both for adults and children with an interest in science. These experiments are reproducible at home and, most of all, fully interactive. Indeed both adults and children are engaged in discussions and attempts to understand the presented phenomena. This year, our intention has been to expand the range of experiments and physics fields. Creation of a non-Newtonian fluid using water mixed with potato flour in an inflatable pool: this experiment is particularly suitable for children because they can see a completely different behavior of matter, far from what they see in everyday life and, most of all, they can reproduce their own non-Newtonian fluid at home. Generation of plasmas through Microwave oven using simply a candle and a beaker on top of it: the intense electromagnetic field causes a ionization of the air subject to combustion which give rise to a blob of plasma. Measurement of the speed of light using a Microwave oven and a chocolate bar: without rotating the chocolate bar, the intense electromagnetic field melt the chocolate where the field is more intense; measuring the distance between this points and using the standard frequency of the microwave, one can give a rough estimate of the speed of light. Waveguide using a green laser and water: water flowing from a bottle can be used as a waveguide for laser light; if water is twisted using acoustic wave, the effect is even more astonishing.

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Lectures on light & light technologies

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2015_Vilnius_Lectures_IYLLithuania can be proud of advancements in lasers, optics and photonics and the interest is wide-spread in society. However there is a lack of high quality seminars, lectures which are open and known for the society. Thus, the Vilnius YM Section offered a cycle of seminars together with solutions of improving the spreading of information and the availability to general audience.

The lectures took place during the international conference for students of physics and natural sciences Open Readings 2015 which is accessible for everyone and is already well-known to students of Vilnius University. However, we thought that reaching full audience is not enough, while there are thousands of people in the internet who would love to see this kind of lectures as well. In total we managed to have 6 lectures starting from physics of the everyday life the lectures covered a variety of topics: nano-structuring, spectroscopy, light emitting diodes, lasers and optical stimulation of neurons and the essence of astrophysics – the black holes. Usually in this international conference topics are not always connected with optics or light sciences, but as this year is the International Year of Light it was a great opportunity to design everything in order to honor the celebration.

Most of the lectures on light and light technologies can be accessed online on the Open Readings web:
• “Move into Nano-World by Femtosecond Lasers” by Wolfgang Kautek
• “Ultrafast processes explored by spectroscopy” by Mikas Vengris
• “From Nanopowder Science to Next Generation Lasers” by Gregory J. Quarles
• “Optical Stimulation of Neurons” by Paul R. Stoddart
• “Supermassive Black Holes and Their Galaxies” by Kastytis Zubovas

This way the number of potential attendees was assured to be as high as possible. We believe that people who attended or watched the lectures improved their theoretical knowledge and got the best look at applications. Lectures increased the awareness of light technologies in general and the importance of International Year of Light was spread as widely as it could be!

Lectures and workshops on scientific publishing

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2015_Vilnius_SCIENTIFIC PUBLISHING_01Most of the section members or students of Faculty of Physics, Vilnius University in general are in the earliest stages of their scientific careers, thus, only a few of us are familiar with scientific publishing, taking into account both the concepts (f.e. scientific paper composition and process of peer reviewing) and the technical part (manuscript preparation, reference managemen). During the activity, lectures of invited speakers (“How to publish your manuscript” by Peter E. Andersen and “How to publish your manuscript: Editorial point of view” by Rachel Won) and chapter members (“Introduction to scientific publishing using LaTeX” by Vytautas Butkus) were held.

The lectures of the invited speakers took place during the “Open readings 2015” conference and attracted around 200 participants, including members of the section and faculty staff. The lecture by Vytautas Butkus was attended by ~20 people, excluding the chapter members. There also were several workshops, where the chapter members and the faculty students were introduced to LaTeX/LyX scientific text preparation tools. Some of the attendees were involved into development of lecture notes of the “Mathematical Physics” subject. The lecture notes were printed and distributed and the selected books about scientific publishing were bought. Workshops were continuously attended by 3-to-5 chapter members and ~5 students. The participants were introduced to many different tips and tricks in scientific publishing. In the lecture and workshops, led by the chapter members, participants were introduced to the history and specificity of the scientific publishing (journals, use of language, publishing and peer review process, etc.) as well as to LaTeX/LyX tools for scientific documents preparation.

This event provided a great understanding of the publishing process, essential skills and practical applications. OSA and SPIE Student Chapters of Vilnius University also played a huge role in the funding of this activity. The funding was used to reimburse the travel expenses (flight tickets, airport transfer and local transport cost and the accommodation cost) of our main lecturer – the editor of Nature Photonics, Rachel Won. We have also bought several books on scientific writing: “Trees, maps and theorems” by Jean-luc Doumont, “The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing” by Richard Dawkins and “The Craft of Scientific Writing” by Michael Alley. They are held in our special Students Scientific Association library and are open for every young mind.

youtubeLook here the video of Rachel Won talk “How to Publish Your Manuscript”!

 

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Physics Got Talent

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2015_Naples_PGT_01On April the 23th took place the Award Cerimony for the contest “Physics Got Talent”. The contest was adressed to young students attending high school in Naples. They had to send a video (max 7 minutes) in which they describe an experiment performed by themselves explaining what they do, what they use and what are the conclusions of their work. The video were download on the facebook page and youtube channel created to increase interest for the event.
We assigned three prizes: two of them chosen by the jury, called the first and second “technical winner”; and another prize for the top rated video on the web (like for Facebook and YouTube) called “popular prize”. The online vote received more 1000 like on the page .
Prizes consisted of didactic sets for the schools. The sets are composed by compasses, electrical circuits, lasers, optical lenses, pendulum, slinky, stopwatches etc.
About 100 students, belonging to the schools who joined the contest, took part to the event.
During the ceremony the videos made by the participants were shown and the students themselves explained better how they performed the experiment, how they built the setup and the reasons who motivated them to join the contest.
These latter short interviews underlined the importance to stimulate curiosity and passion about physics among the younger generation of students. In addition it was an opportunity for students to visit the physics department and know more about young minds project.
The winner was invited to perform their experiment to the event “Passione Fisica” .

Here we report the winners :
Technical prizes:

  1. Liceo Cuoco , “Costruzione di un motore elettrico”(“How to made an eletric motor”)
  2. Liceo Calamandrei , “Termogiocando” (“Playing with termodinamic”)

Popular prize:
Liceo Suor Orsola Benincasa, “Legge di Stevin” (“Stevin’s Law”)

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Physics for everyone project at ELTE

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2015_Budap_P4E03The main goal of the project was to raise public awareness to the everyday influence of physics in our life. Physics themed presentations were held in the whole country organised by the Hungarian EPS member ELFT, and we took our part in the project by organising the main flagship event at the Eötvös University. This was an open and free event for any curious persons, but our main focus was on families, teenagers and younger children. There were four 30 minute long easily understandable and entertaining scientific lectures. The lectures were presented by renewed scientists and students alike, with topics from the most novel and interesting research areas. During the whole afternoon and evening (for seven hours) there were five thematic demonstration stands with over a 100 different experiments (the five themes were: thermodynamics, electromagnetism, modern physics, mechanics and a darkroom for optical experiments). The participants were also able to try out most of the non­dangerous experiments themselves. There were at least four presenters at each table, who were mostly physics students, and there will were additional organisers who have taken small sized groups to the digital planetary at the campus.There were also interesting astronomical lectures every hour in the afternoon, and there was also an hourly rocket and explosion experiment in the open. We and the ELFT aim to grow this national event to an international celebration for physics in the following years.

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Developments in Optics and Communications

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2015_Riga_Devel__03The 11th international student and young scientist conference Developments in Optics and Communications 2015 was held during April 8-10 in Riga, the capital of Latvia, and it gathered around 70 brilliant young scientists from 8 different countries – Latvia, Poland, Denmark, Russia, Armenia, Germany, Italy and Georgia – to share their scientific works, insights and experiences in various fields related to optics: vision science, biophotonics, laser physics and spectroscopy, optics in communiacions and optical materials.
The organizers were happy to welcome two international guest speakers: Dr. Pablo Artal from Spain and Prof. Dr. Lise Lyngsnes Randeberg from Norway. Prof. Dr. Pablo Artal explained the novelties of vision science (“The human eye as a robust optical system”) while Prof. Dr. Lise Lyngsnes Randeberg explained the current progress with non-invasive diagnostics of human skin (“How do optical properties affect light transport in tissue, and which parameters do you need to care about in the lab”). Guest speakers from Latvia gave very interesting talks as well: Dr. Aivars Vembris of Institute of Solid State Physics talked about the main principles and advances in organic solid state lasers, Dr. Dainis Jakovels of Institute for Environmental Solutions introduced the audience about “Applications of airborne optical remote sensing techniques for environmental assessment and monitoring”, Dr. Florian Gahbauer of Faculty of Physics and Mathematics gave a talk on “Nitrogen vacancy centers in diamonds for sensing and quantum information”, and Evija Gulbinska of Latvian American Eye Center talked about “Visian ICL: intraocular collamer lens for refractive correction”. During the conference, also a workshop was organized by Jurita Kruma of Digital tribe WWWOLF on self-motivation and time management “So, I woke up today, and what now?”
The scientific work and presentation of every participant was evaluated by our jury. The best speech and poster holder received a monetary reward for their work. This year the best poster award was given to Andris Bērziņš of University of Latvia for his poster “Magnetic field imaging using nitrogen vacancy (NV) centres in a diamond lattice”. The best oral presentation award was given to Tatevik Chalyan on “Performance optimisation of biosensors based on SiON microring resonators”.
As well as attending the many talks and poster sessions, participants had the opportunity to spend time with fellow scientists in an informal atmosphere – during the Welcome Party, orienteering in the Old Town of Riga and during the conference afterparty. This year International Year of Light was a theme throughout the whole conference – the conference logo was also adjusted for this special celebration year.
This conference was organized by SPIE and OSA chapters and Young Minds student section of University of Latvia.

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ILY @ Developments in Optics and Communications 2015

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Riga_IYL_1During the international student and young scientist conference “Developments in Optics and Communications 2015”, the Riga YM Section organized a special welcome party to celebrate the International Year of Light, although it was a theme throughout the whole conference. The conference logo was adapted this year to include the logo of the International Year of Light. It was mentioned during all three conference days that this year it is a special year for our conference, organizers and also participants and that this year even more than before we are celebrating Light.
Each participant got a present in their conference bag – a pin with the International Year of Light logo.

This social activity included different activities: introduction game in which all the participants could get to know each other better and other games. A KHET Laser Game tournament was held that allowed participants to challenge each other intellectually as well – this game needs knowledge on how light rays reflect, and also some strategic thinking to predict the opponent’s next moves. A Quiz about Physics and Light was held during the Welcome party to see who can get the right answers the fastest.
During the International Year of Light Welcome party, which was held in the evening of the first day of the conference, participants got to know each other better, got a chance to network with each other not just regarding their scientific work, but also to discuss and share ideas about different outreach activities that can be organized. The organizers believe that this event was very useful for everyone, and participants enjoyed it very much.

ACCASTAMPATO writing courses

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2015_Rome_Acca_01On 26th and 27th March 2015 the Rome YM Section organized the 2nd edition of the writing course.
We invited the same teachers of the previous edition, Manuela Cirilli and Massimiliano Razzano, because we really appreciated their communication skills and teaching approach. Further more, we believe their experience as physicist is very valuable for teaching science communication to physics students because both of them are physicist themselves. Manuela worked for years as a researcher in the ATLAS experiment before moving to CERN Knowledge Transfer Office, where she actually works. Massimiliano is an INFN researcher and a journalist for “la Repubblica”, one of the most important Italian newspapers. Besides their experience as researchers, they are very experienced in teaching communication, for instance Manuela is a teacher of the Science Journalism Master of the Ferrara University.

The course was held in the Informatics Laboratory of the Physics Department of “La Sapienza”, in order to give to all the students the possibility to use a computer connected to the internet. As already happened for the past edition, the course has been integrated in the experimental school on science communication co-organised with the “Assaggi” bookstore and “MadMaths” association.

The school lasted two days, with more than 14 hours, of lesson and practical sessions. Manuela and Massimiliano presented the general rules of writing during the first part of the course. The second part consisted of two practical writing sessions where we had the opportunity to simulate an editorial meeting, proposing and selecting titles for different kinds of magazines and writing some of them. The articles were then corrected and the most common errors analysed and discussed.
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