Author: Jan Mlynar

On the EPS supported project proposed and managed by the Czech Physical Society

Science to Go is a Czech organization whose mission is to bring science to a lay audience. Our target audience is adult people, and target places vary from municipal libraries to pubs in small towns or villages. Wherever we go, we bring our enthusiasm for science with us that we want to share with people. Most presenters in Science to Go are young researchers and PhD students - people who are doing top science, who work on narrow topics but are happy to present them engagingly and put them in a broader perspective. A typical Science to Go event is held in the evening, it is ninety minutes long, and it is a mix of three very different natural sciences topics. We always go to places where there are lay people not necessarily interested in the sciences. We don't do presentations in Academia.

Since 2014, there have been about 60 Science to Go events. In total, about 60 topics have been presented by 60 young scientists. Science to Go visited about 15 different places all over the Czech Republic. However, it is firmly established just in the Czech capital city of Prague, where we present scientific topics regularly in the Scout Institute at the Old Town Square. After the covid-19 crisis, we plan to significantly extend our list of places where we regularly go.

The covid-19 crisis didn't stop us! Although it is impossible to organize in-person events, we keep working on scientific outreach by available means. We started a successful facebook show, presenting one topic in 15 minutes each time. We began to do short animated videos and ended up with a film, "A Day with Particles", that had a premiere at the most renowned particle physics conference, ICHEP2020. The film was awarded an honorable mention at the Prague International Monthly Film Festival. During the short period when restrictions were released, we organized a couple of regular shows, we presented Science to Go to the community of physicists at the Conference of Czech and Slovak Physicists, and we projected the film "A Day with Particles" at a conference of Czech physics teachers.

We are very much looking forward to restarting our in-person events. However, we plan to stay in the online world at the same time and to continue with the Facebook show. Also, we have started to record our live events and to put the videos on YouTube. The online activities were created with the massive help of financial support provided by the EPS. We bought a camera, underwent recording training, and profited from a private company's services and expertise specialized in video recording. The film "A Day with Particles" was co-financed by the EPS support. The future of Science to Go is ahead of us, and we cannot wait for the beautiful mix of live and online activities!