FZU presented the beauty of physics at the Science Fair

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For the ninth time, we met science enthusiasts from schools and the general public at the Czech Academy of Sciences' Science Fair, the largest popular science event in the Czech Republic. At the FZU exhibition, people could play sunrays in the photovoltaic tent, see the spectrum of visible light with their own eyes, build molecules from Lego, read new physics-themed comics and short stories, and also see a real magnetic sputtering machine, observe the martensitic transformation of alloys under a microscope, and other important physical instruments and phenomena.

“I am delighted that among the hundred people who collaborated on our exhibition there were many young people, such as students from Open Science internships and the Young Physicists' Tournament, and now also colleagues from the Physics for the Future project and the Dioscuri Center for Single-Molecule Optics,” says Institute Director Michael Prouza, adding: “I would like to thank everyone for their careful preparation of the exhibits and activities and for the energy they put into the presentation on site. Our exhibition is developing year by year and we always bring something new, so even regular visitors are happy to come back.”

Among the new items presented were the comic book Secrets of the Nanoworld, which introduces people to the functioning and beauty of the world on the smallest scales, and the anthology Fyzika budoucnosti (Physics of the Future), in which science fiction stories with accompanying popular science articles written by scientists at the FZU offer various visions of the future of physics and our world.

Visitors appreciated not only the breadth of physics topics presented, but also the involvement of foreign scientists, whom they rarely encountered at other exhibitions. Thanks to the presentation of real instruments and experiments on one hand, and activities such as building molecules from Lego or candy on the other, the exhibition appealed to those who are deeply interested in physics as well as those who came to the fair mainly to experience the huge range of scientific topics and have fun – whether they were five or fifty years old.

The exhibition was also visited by the new president of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Radomír Pánek, and senators Jiří Drahoš and Jiří Růžička. The photovoltaic part of the exhibition was presented to them by Martin Ledinský, head of the thin film group for photovoltaics.

The large hall was filled during talks by Jan Ebr and Ivana Ebrová, who presented the largest collisions in space, including practical demonstrations on a smaller scale, and Jan Kaufman, who showed poor physics in films and how the relevant scenes would play out with realistic physics. At the end of the lecture, we launched the aforementioned anthology Physics of the Future, and as for cosmic collisions, visitors to the exhibition were able to see a model of a black hole and the results of its collisions with stars and other celestial bodies up close.

All that remains is to look forward to next year's Science Fair and invite all those interested in science to other events in the meantime: we invite everyone to VědaFest on Wednesday, June 18, and in the fall, we look forward to seeing you at Zažít město jinak ('Take Back Your Street!'), Researchers' Night, the Week of the Czech Academy of Sciences, and other events for the public and schools.