Every year, our Young Minds section figures out a new direction in
which to grow our School for Young Physicists project – this time, we began
expanding our efforts beyond traditional sessions with lectures and tried
building physics workshops at various events – such as town fairs, festivals
and summer camps for children, even briefly appearing in a TV show.
Once the
season ends in May, we have free time during the summer, and it can be put to
good use. Our workshop activities especially ramped up towards the second half
of summer 2016 – numerous towns invited us to fairs, we took part in the
extreme sports festival “Playground”, appeared on a TV quiz for school students
called “eXperiments”, took part in a project that merges humanitarian arts such
as song and poetry with the precision of physics, and much more. In these
workshops, we take a step away from our typical format, focusing more on the
fun one has doing experiments and trying to raise interest in physics by way of
the wow-factor. For this reason, we built gadgets such as a huge slingshot and
assembled a spud gun.
A
group of students doing a quest as part of our workshop in a summer camp
The workshops appear to have been a success, as we received more
and more offers to host our workshops as the summer rolled on and transitioned
into autumn. With the beginning of our school year season, these activities
have toned down in intensity, but nevertheless happen from time to time. The
second semester promises more workshop activities and physics demonstrations,
as the yearly TV show will take place again in the spring season and a few
other projects take place.
Experiment workshop
in a town fair towards the end of summer
