Yesterday Alice and I spent the afternoon and evening in the cute coastal town of Eckernförde, enjoying the summer-y weather, the Baltic Sea, and — of course! — the science outreach. It was European Researchers’ Night!
We represented the energie:labor and our research group by entertaining many many people in our little blue tent:
The goal was to engage the public in thinking about physics, particularly about energy. What better tool to use than a thermal imaging camera?
I’ve talked about the many ways you can play with that sort of camera before (see here), but last night was special. To catch people’s eyes and engage children as well as grown-ups, we had prepared a couple of fun experiments, for example hitting gummi bears with a hammer and observing how that changes the temperature.
Despite the large media interest we didn’t make the local newspaper’s front page today ;-)
To get an impression of how much fun we had, watch the movie below. This was an hour before the official opening of the event, and the last seconds we had to actually do things ourselves before we got run over by curious crowds. Who knew that people are so keen on learning physics? ;-)
Thanks, Alice, we are a great team and I had so much fun! :-)
My new school lab on energy in the climate system has been launched! :-) – Mirjam S. Glessmer says:
[…] Another part of the energy puzzle of the hydrological cycle: How much do raindrops falling down on the ground actually heat up the ground? The students are looking at the wooden board on the floor, using a thermal imaging camera. They won’t see a lot when the bouncing ball hits, but they saw a clear signal with the heavy metal ball they used earlier! Kinda like what we did at the European Researcher’s Night (see here). […]
New #SciCommChall is out! April 2018 – #SciCommChall says:
[…] we are planning ahead for several events this summer. From our experience with last year’s European Researchers’ Night we are expecting our audience to mainly consist of parents and grandparents with pre-school and […]