Author: Duarte Esteves

On the evening of October 9, 2021, the Lisbon YM section, with the support of the Portuguese Physics Society, organised the very first edition of the “Young Minds Movie Night”. The event took place in the beautiful cloister of the Lisbon Museum of Natural History and Science. This outreach activity targeted a broad and general audience, and the main goal was teaching Physics to everyone in a fun way.

The event consisted of two parts. First, the classic 1985 science fiction film Back to the Future was screened in a familiar and relaxed atmosphere. The participants were invited to bring their blankets and watch the movie with their friends while enjoying complimentary popcorn and beverages provided by us. Besides greatly contributing to the atmosphere, the outdoors setting was essential in order to adhere to the sanitary regulations in place.

Afterwards, Dr Marina Cortês, a researcher at the Institute of Astrophysics and Space Sciences of the University of Lisbon and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Canada, gave an exciting lecture entitled “What does time travel have to do with puppets?”. Given the diversity of the audience, Dr Cortês sought clarity while explaining the nature of time as it is currently understood by theoretical physicists, taking the opportunity to dispel some commonly disseminated misconceptions. Of course, inspired by the movie, the (im)possibility of time travel was also examined, which led to a discussion on the concept of free-will under the theory of Einstein’s block universe. In the end, the participants also had the opportunity to ask questions, bringing several other interesting topics to the table in an informal conversation.

Thus, under the pretext of screening a fun movie, it was possible to introduce stimulating and fundamental concepts of modern Physics to our audience, whose ages ranged from 11 to 72 years old. In the end, the feedback was overwhelmingly positive, with everyone agreeing that it was definitely a very pleasant event which certainly merited a second edition to take place in the near future!

https://www.facebook.com/EPSYoungMindsLisbon

https://www.instagram.com/youngmindslisbon/

image: Afonso Caçador

Authors: Gabriele Trovato, Paola La Magna, Massimo Germanà

Thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Catania section of EPS Young Minds had the chance to grow and improve. In fact, many new members joined us, inspired by our activities and our mission. We had to rethink our activities in an online version.

Our section collaborated with our department of Physics to create a PCTO project, which consists of part-time jobs/stages for high school students. The name of the project is “Dalla Ricerca alla Divulgazione''.

One of these events was Fisic@Catania. This event took place on November 27, on the occasion of the European Researchers' Night 2020, and it was streamed on YouTube. The purpose of this event was to disseminate among people the most recent scientific discoveries made by physicists from Catania. High school students were also involved through the PCTO project. During the morning, brief interviews were held on a topic chosen by the guests themselves: ten researchers were interviewed, ranging from condensed matter to astrophysics, from particle physics to complex systems.

The activity called “Fisic@Catania Dig-Out '' could be thought of as a sequel of the previous one. This time the students involved in the PCTO project had to choose the topic, because they usually do not have the opportunity to be in contact with someone who works on physics projects.

To develop such a complete activity, we split the event in two days, one for each group: Astrophysics and Condensed Matter Physics, Nuclear Physics and Theoretical Physics. For each physical field there was a professor of the department of Physics of Catania who talked about the research activities she/he is involved in Catania.

The talks had a “dig-out mode”, in the sense that it was like a conversation between the professor and an EPS Young Minds member who asked her/him some curiosities. In this way the professor gave an overview on the physics behind the research, what we know up to now and what they aim to reach, she/he told some personal aspects, but she/he also let the high school students know the good reasons to study Physics at Catania.

After these talks (30 minutes each), we gathered some questions of the students which the professor was glad to answer.
In conclusion the events turned out to be successful, the high school students appreciated it a lot and they discovered some scenarios they did not know at all.

• Fisic@Catania 27/11/2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kDDdtfZMz8&t=4540s
  
• Fisic@Catania Dig-Out 15/01/2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r6X9wJyttA&t=109s&ab_channel=EPSYoungMindsCT
• Fisic@Catania Dig-Out 22/01/2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsdTi5AhLys
  

Fisic@Catania activities are just a portion of the activities related to the PCTO project, we could say that it is the starting point, the “Ricerca '' part. From February to May there are a series of activities related to FameLab that cover the “Divulgazione” part, but we need a second article to talk about it, so stay tuned!

Authors: Ana Álvarez Yenes, Carmen Martín Valderrama

On February 2021, we had the opportunity to listen to Dr. Andrea Welsh talk about mental health and specially how it affects pre-PhD Students in an online webinar. Dr. Andrea Welsh is a postdoctoral researcher and instructor at the University of Pittsburgh Department of Mathematics where she works on dynamics in neuroscience. She has written articles about mental health in Physics Today, oSTEM blog, and Physics Magazine. In her talk, she did not only give information on the topic but also provided with lots of useful resources and tools to help us actively work on our wellbeing.

I found this talk very necessary, as it shone light on some taboo issues that people might not identify on themselves or others, or they might be afraid to talk about. The webinar as whole was a well-structured guide on what is mental health, how to identify when it is affected and what to do to improve it. Dr. Welsh provided many studies on the topic, but most importantly, she gave tips that all attendees (students and mentors) can apply to their daily work life in order to make the scientific world more welcoming. The highlight for me is that Dr. Welsh also shared some online communities on Twitter or Slack (in which she is involved) that allow young scientist all over the world to support each other, specially in the current times. Some of them are the following:

• Chronically Academic - https://chronicallyacademic.org/
  
• Chronically Invisible - https://www.chronically-invisible.com/
  
• Disabled in STEM - https://disabledinstem.wordpress.com/
  
• Voices of Academia - https://voicesofacademia.com/
  
• Open Academics – https://www.oacommunity.org/
  
• Dragonfly Mental Health - http://dragonflymentalhealth.com
  
• The Mighty - https://themighty.com/
  

During the questions at the end of the talk there was an interesting discussion during which both the speaker and the attenders shared their personal experiences and advise when dealing with mental health.

Overall, it was a very positive and welcoming webinar on a topic that might be difficult to talk about, with lessons that are very useful in the scientific world but also in all aspects of life. I would recommend anybody to attend this kind of talk, even if their mental health is great as we can always help make the atmosphere we work in a little better.  In the end, as Dr. Welsh said: “Working hard is important but feeling good is important too.”

Authors: Jorge Monzón de Castro, Pablo Gila Herranz, Carmen Martín Valderrama

Physics League Valladolid (Spain) has continued its activities despite the current pandemic. With all the security and safety measures, we have maintained a high level and number of activities to all the publics. Would you want to know what we have done?

March 2020. The pandemic starts, people get confined. Weariness for some, source of initiative and imagination for us. “Ciencia en cuarentena” was a project we started on Twitter to make a bunch of videos telling people cool science experiments they can do at home. Time to combat boredom! “La Fisiliga” was an exciting tournament in which full-time physicists challenged each other. Our public decided by voting who won each round and learned who each physicist was and what they did (https://twitter.com/Physics_League/status/1258369583125233664?s=20).

At the end of the academic year, secondary students face one of their life-decisions: what they want to study at the university. We help them by organising an online conference about science degrees and jobs, letting the students meet people of all science fields. We talked about our experiences and answered questions to all who were to enter a university programme.

Summer and fall! Time to safe presential activities! With no health risk, we managed to perform a show in Rueda (Spain) about the physics behind the superpowers. We also attended an important craftwork and robotics fair in Valladolid called Craftinnova, making good contacts and displaying our amazing hand-made physics experiments. In Pozaldez town, we made a great interactive workshop with the town people (always with a mask, security distance and tons of hydroalcoholic solution).

And now, the crown jewel: Game of Physics, Online Edition. Our most lauded workshop, streamed on Youtube! Over 600 students watched the broadcast. We worked hard get it out with (almost) no glitches (https://youtu.be/cX5orCvvwdU).

Future projects? A lot of them. We are planning a huge collaboration with associations from all the Spanish territory to make an online conference every week for all the Spanish-speaking people. We are also organising an online gymkhana about Martian science for school students, two online workshops for similar public during class time and all the activities which are to come, such us a giant Tesla Coil we are building and making a video-tutorial so that other sections can replicate our work.

We are alive! And we are dangerous! No excuses for spreading physics knowledge!

Authors: Daryna Pesina, Mattia Ostinato, Carmen Martín-Valderrama

On 28 October, EPS Young Minds hosted a webinar with Dr. Gregory Quarles, a renowned physicist with 25 years of experience driving cutting-edge laser, optics and photonics technology development. Currently Dr. Quarles is CEO and a member of the Board Tucson-based Applied Energetics, Inc., previously he served as the Chief Scientific Officer for the Optical Society and worked, among other institutions, at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. Having been employed in academia, at a government research laboratory, at a not-for-profit society, and more recently in industry, in his talk “Beyond the Scientific Method for Career Success” Dr. Quarles brought a unique perspective to opportunities that present themselves to young researchers as their career progresses. Gregory shared practical, real-world advice detailing opportunities, challenges and decisions that can enhance the growth of a student’s career and described the benefits of leadership opportunities through volunteerism in global societies.

On 11 November, the webinar by Dr. Marina Corradini took place. As a Science Communication Officer at the Euro-Mediterranean Seismological Centre and former member of the Naples YM Section, she presented the seminar titled “Demolishing Barriers to Science”, addressing the topics of gender inequality and underrepresentation of women and minorities in Academia and STEM-related fields. More than 40 people attended the seminar, where Marina illustrated three key points to significantly weaken the gender barrier in science:  awareness of the situation, actions to be undertaken and resources to use and share.  First, she presented the social issues and those internal to academia, which were followed by a discussion on the different ways each of us can take action in order to make the STEM environment a place without gender discrimination. The talk was accompanied by resources, links to groups addressing any mentioned issue and references to many initiatives. Participants also shared other resources and interacted intensively with the speaker, showing a great enthusiasm, and proposing a good amount of questions. With such an attendance and participation, the seminar has been a huge success thanks to the incredible work of Marina.

Both webinars were streamed online on the Facebook page of EPS Young Minds Programme. You can always watch them here:

• https://fb.watch/2b3-fIPbQ3/
• https://fb.watch/2bapyi4ckk/