42nd “School of Young Physicists” in Skopje and “The Light Fantastic show” in Ohrid
The Society of Physicists of Macedonia, together with its Skopje Young Minds section, has organised two major outreach events in this 2018/2019 academic year. One was the 42nd “School of Young Physicists” in Skopje with more than 500 registered participants, and the other “The Light Fantastic show” in Ohrid, which completely filled a 600-seat theater, one of the largest events in the Society’s long history.
The 42nd “School of Young Physicists”, organised the 9th and 10th of November last year, in the largest mall in “Skopje City Mall”, made the whole shopping mall vibrant with exciting experiments and pupils explaining their understanding of physics to the general public.
For this event, the Skopje Young minds section prepared five posters that were positioned all around the mall. The posters covered a diverse range of topics, such as important people in physics history, the basics of mechanics, the meaning of physics in everyday life, the fun of being a physicist, and a poster dedicated to EPSYM, 50 years of EPS and the Society of Physicists of Macedonia. Every teacher who attended the event received copies of these posters to enrich their own school physics classroom. Students from the section presented advanced experiments in the mall halls, intended as educative activities for the school attendants and the general public. Eight university professors and four undergraduate students held lectures in the largest cinema hall in Skopje on various modern topics in physics on a level accessible to the lay audience. To spice up the excitement for physics, two high school students, winners of a competition for young innovators, also presented their motivation, idea, and concept to the audience. Their talk received a positive response, as they conveyed the very important idea that physics is not only learning and solving equations, but that it is applicable, innovative and one of the most important aspects of the future development of humanity.
Although we know that it is often hard to hold the attention of 12-14 year olds, “The Light Fantastic show”, a theatrical journey with light, accomplished just that for 1.5 hours in the completely full cultural center/theater in Ohrid, Republic of North Macedonia on the 28th of February 2019. Originally developed for 2015, the International Year of Light, this show presents almost all of light phenomena through experiments understandable for younger audience. As a good prelude for the celebration of the Day of light in May 2019, almost 600 children from primary and high schools in the Ohrid region left the theater discussing lasers, spherical mirrors, total reflection, fiber optics, and the difference in the spectra of everyday light bulbs. As some of them said: “There were words we heard for the first time, but they were explained with images in a way that our imagination will not forget for some time”.
All in all, these were great outreach events that for a brief moment brought a whole shopping mall, as the poster stated “In the world of physics”, and inspired children to discuss all the “magical” aspects of light for a few weeks after.
We are very grateful to EPSYM for the financial support in the organisation of this EPSYM2018B27 and EPSYM2019A03 outreach events.
- Skopje Young minds section https://www.facebook.com/skopjeyms/
- Society of Physicists of Macedonia: website and Facebook
