14th season of School of Young Physicists

 

We have led another successful semester of School for Young Physicist sessions. This year came with a challenge at times since we have seen an influx of students this year, but this is a challenge that we welcome as long as more people who are interested in physics have the opportunity to study it outside of the classroom. This semester has also come with another good surprise. In all but one of the sessions we had an international guest or someone who works somewhere else than Latvia. Expanding the horizons of our students is one of our goals, so that they see more of what happens not only locally but also internationally. Two of such sessions were about physics is medicine and electromagnetism.

              In the former there was a more general lecture on some uses of physics in hospitals. For example, how ultrasound works and is used for imaging for medical complications, as well as the working principles of an electro cardiogram. The guest of this session Ingolf Sack, PhD went more in depth of what can be achieved with ultrasound and related technologies. For the practical part of the session one of our students developed a to experience one of the quantum computing cryptographic methods.

              In the latter we dwelled deep into what is electromagnetic radiation. The process through which electromagnetic waves are produced was explained. The uses of many sections of the electro magnetic spectrum was looked into and talked about. The guest was prof. Ingolf Sack with whom we had a Q&A session about his work with the use of induction in many industrial processes.

School of Young Physicists Carrier day

 

In the beginning of the spring semester, we experimented with a new kind of event for us instead of the usual sessions we deliver. We wanted to expand the view of our students about the job market and options that people that study STEM fields after high school. We tried and succeeded in creating interesting activities that are more engaging than the usual lectures.

Par the of the day of the event was taken up by two activities: an inverse job interview and a quiz. For the inverse job interview we turned around the job interviews that we all must go through. Two of the invited guests from local businesses were interviewed by the students with the general idea of “why should I work for you?”  which gave a more approachable way for the students to find out how it is for people after finishing their education in the Stem fields when looking for a job. In the quiz we formulated the questions so that the guest must take their best guest on not what the correct answer is, but which answer the students think is the correct one. This sparked a conversation between the guests and the students with every question.

              The attending students enjoyed the event, and we plan on hosting such an event again in the future to help students learn of the opportunities that are available to people who study the STEM fields.

Ballistics and parallax

 

We have successfully ended another semester of School of Young Physicists. The last two of last semester's sessions were about ballistics and astronomy. In the former we explored how trajectories of long range projectiles are calculated and how the Coriolis effect is taken into the equation to achieve accurate results. For the practical part our team set up strings from the 7th floor to the 5th floor so that the students could drop a clay ball at a target from a release mechanism that slides along the string, for which they needed to calculate the release time. For the more in depth lecture we had a guest from the Latvian armed forces drone division.

The final session in the last semester was about astronomy. In the popular science lecture we got a chance to learn about extreme objects in space and many methods that are used to calculate distances in the outreaches of space. For the practical task we dived into parallax. We used the parallax method to first calculate how far an object is from a phone on the table, and then we sent the students outside to calculate distance to far away buildings. In the in-depth lecture, we discussed black holes and relativity.

Both of these sessions were met with great reviews and it could be seen that the students had fun during both the lectures and practical task. This season has been a great success, and records have been broken, we are looking forward to the new year.

Season 14 of school of young physicists

 

We have started the 14^th season of School of Young Physicists with flying colours.

At the start of the Autumn semester, we were invited to appear in a national TV morning show, where we had the opportunity to talk about what we do in our monthly sessions. Even before that we had set a new record for attendance with more than 350 students coming to session in September. With every month the amount of ambitious high schoolers and middle schoolers, that we had the chance to educate about numerous concepts in physics, has grown. In September when the topic for the session was nuclear physics, we decided to do something new, since it is hard to touch single atoms. Thus we created a debating competition, where the students could compete in debates on whether nuclear power should or should not be used in our own country. The pro and against argument was assigned randomly. This was surprisingly well received among the students and can be called a definite success.

Our team is happy that the number of students coming in search of knowledge outside of the school program is increasing with hopes that it will increase further.

Conclusion of season 13!

 

The thirteenth season of School of new physicists is over. This has been a long year, a lot has been done, accomplished, worked on. Lets take a look a the most memorable moments.

We have had sessions on engineering physics, culinary physics, optics, quantum physics and chaos.

In the engineering physics session, we learned how we evaluate material properties, and how they are used to construct stable, earthquake proof structures. In the lab work, we had a competition for building the most earthquake proof tower. It was a lot of fun seeing the towers crumble under the pressure.

In culinary physics we looked at how ice crystal size effect ice cream consistency and taste. The microwave was put to test, we learned how it works. In the practical part, we measured how the foam in carbonated drinks decreases in time.

In optics we learned about how to take the best photography, what are the apertures and all the other numbers and letters on your camera. After that, we built our own spectroscopes, and analyzed different light sources.

After that, some quantum physics was necessary, we started from the basics, with the historical development. Then, something new was needed, we learned about what are quantum games, how they are used to analyse simple systems and how to explain the CHSH game.

In the end, we finished chaotically – with chaos. We looked at weather forecasts, and why they tend to be so inaccurate and ended with Romeo and Juliet, and their chaotic love story.

It was great to be together with you all, see you next year.

Activities of the season

 

This has been one of our best years in recent history. Our attendance has increased, a high of the last few years, reaching more than 350 unique students of our school, not counting people reached at different festivals.

We participated in many different activities. Not only our usual session at our home – The House of sciences, but also went to other cities, and participated in festivals, reaching an audience otherwise unreachable.

All year long, our students competed in our competition – the best test taker. Each session, they had to take a short test of 10 questions about the lectures given. Usually, we give out small prizes for the best test takers, however, this year, we had a much larger prize. We have been working with CERN, and in collaboration with them, two of the best test takers, one girl and one boy, were able to take an all expenses paid trip to the CERN accelerator complex. Two students from the tenth grade were the best, beating all the other, both younger and older highschoolers. And at the start of July, they went on a three-day trip to the accelerator complex, visiting the Latvian scientists working there and enjoying the fruits of their labor. They visited the CMS or compact muon solenoid detector and also the anti-matter factory. Finishing on the anniversary lecture of the discovery of the Higgs boson.

A lot has been accomplished this year, but we are looking forward to the next season, more physics is coming. See you all next year.

School of Young Physicists partners with CERN

 

This year has brought us many new things. One of the most interesting one is our collaboration with the European Organization for Nuclear research, otherwise known as CERN. A surprising, but a welcome guest to our community.

In recent years, Latvia has become a member country of CERN. This brings new opportunities to all Latvian students, especially doctorate students. We have partnered with the Latvian team at CERN on popularizing physics and showcasing the opportunities we have at CERN.

As a part of our collaboration, in September we had a session on particle physics, where we talked about all things CERN. As we have partnered with CERN, we had a live virtual tour of CERN laboratories, accompanied by the Latvian scientists working there. Two scientists working there, virtually joined us here in Latvia, while walking in the CERN campus through the labs. A few other of the Latvian scientists working in CERN joined us also here, for a questions and answers session, where the students were able to ask all questions of interest about how it is to work there, what do you need to do to get there, and especially, something of interest for all of us, how much are they getting paid and many, many other questions. Our partnership brings many opportunities to our students. Throughout the year, we will give out tests, and the best performing girl and boy will get a prize. It will be an all paid two-day trip to CERN. They will be accompanied by one of our members and will be able to see what the scientists do there, experience the amazing scientific atmosphere and see all the amazing equipment they use to discover particles.

Season 13 of School of Young Physicists

 

We have welcomed 2023 with another School of Young Physicists session.

This year has been a resurgent year for our community, as all restrictions have been lifted, we have experienced a rapid growth in our numbers. In our 13th season, we have had 5 sessions so far. We have covered particle physics, electronics, colour physics, hydrodynamics and engineering physics. In the particle physics session, we explored all things CERN. What it is, what they do and how we can help. And in the practical session, we did our best to try and see muons. We build small cloud chambers from glass jars, which did a surprisingly good job of catching the muon tracks. In October we put on our electronics hats and put ourselves in the role of electronics engineers, we designed and built different kinds of circuit boards. In November we talked colour phyics, how our eyes work and perceive colours. Talked about how the quantum world plays a role in the way we see things. In December we explored the world of hydrodynamics. In the practical part of our session, we studied the Reynolds number and how it describes laminar and turbulent flows and the changes in the flow. In our most recent session, we look at how we build stuff that withstand earthquakes and strong winds. In the practical session, we tried to build earthquake proof towers, some withstood them, but some failed to do that.

We still have 4 more sessions to go this season, and we look forward to bringing physics to the forefront of our society

Solving crimes with physics

 

In our first session back in person, we explored forensic physics. In the popular-science lectures we explored how physics is used in crime scenes to get information about what happened. The interesting part of the session was the experimental part, where we put the gained knowledge to test – we solved a crime ourselves.

In this crime a member of the School of Young Physicists was “murdered”, and we had to find his killer. There were 3 parts to the task. Students were given a list of suspects and their alibis and what they were doing at different times. Firstly, students had to narrow the time frame of the murder, this was done using Newton’s law of cooling. This allowed them to eliminate some of the suspects. The second task was blood splatter analysis, there was a sheet filled with blood splatter, and measuring the blood droplets, they could gain information on suspects height. The third task was ballistic analysis, figuring out the bullet’s trajectory. All the collected information allowed them to make a calculated guess at who is the “murderer”. They were able to check hypothesis by shining an ultraviolet light at their prime suspect’s hands, because the murderer’s hands were covered in “gunpowder”, which glows under UV light, they had one try, the most careful and attentive students found the “killer”.

This has been one of the more interesting experimental sessions we have had, students had a lot of fun and gave great reviews to the session, an interesting and fun experience for everyone.

The 12th season of the School of Young Physicists

 

The 12^th season of School of Young physicists is over. A lot has happened the past year, however, we finally see a light at the end of the tunnel. We were able to hold the final two sessions of the season in person, although still limited to hundred students, however, this limitation will be gone by the next semester. Four sessions were held this semester. In February we learned about electromagnetic waves and how they are used for communicating, looking at how technologies like Bluetooth and wifi work. In March physical chemistry was our task. We looked at chemistry through physicist’s eyes – through quantum mechanics. We explored the subject of chemical bonds, what they are and how we study them. Finally, we looked at Schrodinger’s equation, and some problems physicist encounter while studying quantum chemistry using it. After this, in April, we finally were able to host a session in person, and we started with forensic physics. We explored how physics is used for solving crimes, and in the experimental part we solved a murder. In the last session of the season, in May, we went on a journey to explore different technologies. For example, how our phones work, what are OLED screens and explored augmented reality technologies.

This semester has brought forward different challenges; however, we have tackled them head on and surpassed them. We are filled with joy that we were able to finally hold sessions in person and we are awaiting the next semester and hope to bring physics to more and more people.

The first part of Season 12

 

The first part of the 12^th season of School of Young physicists is over. This has been a challenging year because of the Covid situation in Latvia. The semester started with in-house sessions for the first time since 2020. We started by tackling the scientific method. Something that is not talked about often enough, especially in the times we are in now, that misinformation is rampant, it is of utmost importance to be able to tell the difference between what is true and what is misleading information. In this session we had guests from Scepticafe, a group, which has been doing work on educating the public on misinformation, critical thinking and debunking myths that people falsely believe in. The second session was about statistics and its use in physics. We learned about basic statistics and its use in physics, and delved deeper in error analysis, an important part of physics that is usually not taught in high school. However, after these sessions, with the covid situations going out of hand in Latvia, we had to move online, and after student suggestions, we decided to post monthly physics problem and a home experiment, more about that in the next article.

We look forward to working with students and seeing them back in the House of Science, a thing that we have missed immensely.

Q&A session with Jeff Wiener

 

In the last session of this season we had the great opportunity of having Jeff Wiener with us on our Q&A session. Jeff is a staff scientist, managing CERN's national and international teacher programme and conducting physics education research with high school teachers and students. Besides, he is investigating how best to use medical applications of particle physics as a tool for science diplomacy in low- and middle-income countries.

In the Q&A session we discussed, how it is working at CERN, and why there are people working there 24 hours a day, since when the experiments are done, they are running without a stop for a long period of time. He gave us ways how students could start working there. And we talked about the intricacies of working in CERN. One of my favourite stories Jeff talked about was about napkins. In the cafeteria in CERN, a couple of years ago the food providers wanted to stop giving paper napkins, but the scientists at CERN were enraged. The reason for this was because usually during lunch, when they are talking about what they were doing that day and explaining the problems they have come across, it is in these moments that often breakthroughs happen, and the solutions are always written down on these paper napkins. It is said that all of the important ideas are written down on napkins in CERN

We hope to have more brilliant people with us in the Q&A sessions next year as well.

The end of season 11

 

The 11th season of School of Young physicists is over. Another year full of interesting physics and fun experiments. In the second half of the season, we had sessions, in which we learned about computer modeling, and how we use math, programming and physics to simulate the reality on the amazing computers. The second one was about units, we explored the SI unit system and the bizarre world of natural units, where we say that the speed of light is equal to the Planck’s constant and both are equal to 1. In the third session we explored the world of biophysics and how physics can explain the deep blue of the morpho butterflies wings, we also looked at the interesting problem of protein folding, and why solving this problem is so important for the future medicine. Then followed the session on energy, where we looked at the types of energy and how they transform into one another, and untangled Albert Einstein’s famous equation E = mc² and the bizarre outcomes it predicts. And we ended on the Standard model of particle physics. We explored the road of a proton in the particle accelerators from the hydrogen atom to the collisions that helped us discover the Higgs Boson particle. Besides that, we looked at symmetries and why they are so important in theoretical physics and of course dug deep into the Standard model to try to understand what it is.

As I said I would keep you updated on our survey of sin and cosine, I can now officially say  to cosine is the superior trigonometric function, as our Q&A session guests have voted in favor of it in 8 to 1.

This has been another great year of physics, and we are looking forward to the what the next season of SYP will bring.

Sine or Cosine

This year, to better accommodate to the times right now, we have slightly changed the format of our sessions. Instead of a thorough lecture of the sessions subject by a professor or a professional of it, we have added a Q&A session with them. This allows more of a back and forth discussion between the students and the guest. 

Students present question they want to ask them in the sign-up, which gives them time to think of interesting questions to ask. And after we are done with their questions, as an ending question to the Q&A session, we came up with a question of utmost importance:” Sine or cosine”. So far, in the four sessions we have had, cosine has been the preferred trigonometric function and has won with a result of 3:1. I guess it has better and more useful properties than sine, however, lets wait for the next semester and see what the others will say.

Anniversary session

This was a special year, it was our 10^th anniversary season. For ten years we have been giving students the possibility of learning about the intricacies and beauty of physics. Although our initial plan of the season ending session had to be canceled, we adapted and even brought lectures to a larger audience. In this anniversary session a re-run of some the most popular lectures of all 10 seasons combined with a few other interesting topics was given, thus providing the possibility to hear about interesting phenomena and topics to students, who had not heard them before. The video lectures were made by some the founding members of the organization. The lectures covered topics like movie physics, Archimedes force, what is cold, why the Sun shines, pandemic prognosis, molecules in a mole and describing the world with dice. Altogether 7 video lectures were made, and they can be found on our Youtube channel “Jauno Fiziķu skola”. 

We have thoroughly enjoyed this experience and we are looking forward to another ten years of bringing physics to the public.

A recap of season 10

The 10^th season of School for Young Physicists was the most successful of all time. The average attendance was the highest ever – around 300 students each session and one of the sessions had the highest evaluation given by students of all ten seasons.

In the second part of the season we covered topics like electronics, sound and acoustics, material physics, quantum physics. And in these sessions, we learned how computers detect and fix errors in digital data, how to build an amphitheater with great acoustics and how we find composite materials. In the in-house experimental sessions, we looked at some interesting circuit designs, measured frequency of a vibrating rubber band and tested the strength of chocolate composite materials.

Despite the difficulties the Covid pandemic caused, we were able to conduct the last two sessions online through Youtube lectures, which can be seen on our Youtube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_V5Wzm6Waj6ouyIPyZOj7w/featured). In these lectures we learned about the history and the progression of quantum physics, and about quantum cryptography. And in the last session, which was our anniversary session we had a re-run of the most popular lectures of SYP history, 7 lectures were published.

And in the annual school cup, with 326 points “Fizmatiķi” claimed victory over “Cikliskie Pingvīni” by only 3 points, which was the closest margin of victory of all years the school cup has been held.

We are looking forward to seeing all the amazing and smart students in autumn hopefully in our home The Science House.