The Centre for Advanced Photonics and Process Analysis (CAPPA) was delighted to host a series of talks titled “Shine a Light on Physics” for primary and secondary school students during the month of May. The primary school talks took place every Thursday during May and the secondary school talk took place on 12th of May. The event consisted of a series of online talks and experiments across a variety of physics topics with a specific focus on photonics in everyday life.
The event was focused around international day of light, which took place on 16th of May 2021. The international day of light is a global initiative that provides an annual focal point for the continued appreciation of light and the role it plays in science, culture and art, education and sustainable development and in fields as diverse as medicine, communications and energy.
Some of the topics covered included:
- What is light
- The important role of light in our everyday lives
- Photonics in everyday life
- Laser, movies and sound
- Photonics in nature
- Richard Feynman
There was also a variety of experiments involved including microwaving grapes, colour space concept and colour dependent absorption by balloons with each event also including a quiz on how well do you know photonics. Over the course of the event, there was five different primary schools and four different secondary schools involved in the event.
CAPPA runs outreach events for both primary and secondary schools each year. CAPPA will be starting conducting these again from September 2021. You can see previous outreach events we have conducted here. If you are interested in being involved or keeping up to date with further information on outreach events from CAPPA you can contact [email protected] or [email protected]. Please note if you are interested in being involved in any CAPPA outreach activities please email us your express of interest as soon as possible as places are limited.