How do you convey research in science and technology in a fascinating and exciting lecture even to those who do not have a scientific education?
Against this challenge will compete five Israeli scientists who reached the final stage of the prestigious international competition "Faymlab Israel 2015 - Physics in 3 minutes" which will be held on Thursday, May 7 in Tel Aviv. The contestants in the final competition are: Ben Ohion, Avital Deri, Amir Weizman, Lev Tal-Or, and Elad Shleifer.
The "Faymlab" competition is being held this year to mark the 60th anniversary of the CERN particle accelerator in Geneva and on the occasion of Israel joining this year as a full member of the European Research Center in Geneva and special for physics lectures. The competition is organized by the Israeli National Academy of Sciences with Hamda - the Center for Science Education in Tel Aviv, the i-core Center of Excellence in Physics: "The Quantum Universe", in collaboration with the British Council. Contestants in the competition, bachelor's and master's degree graduates dealing with physics, who are required to present to an audience a scientific topic in 3 minutes in an exciting, precise and clear manner (without aids and presentations).
The fascinating and fun competition is looking for the new face of science communication and aims to encourage and train young scientists to integrate communication with the general public in their scientific-technological career. The competition was founded 11 years ago as part of the science festival that takes place every year in June in the town of Cheltenham in Great Britain and was adopted as an international project.
The field of science communication - which strives to create bridges between scientists and the press and the general public, is one of the highlights promoted in Israel by a number of bodies, led by the Israeli National Academy of Sciences, partly through the "FailLab" competition.
All five Israeli scientists who advanced to the finals had the opportunity to participate in a unique master class held this month led by the renowned British expert Malcolm Love and experts from Israel, who trained them in science communication. The winner of the first place in the competition will be sent to represent the State of Israel in the finals of the competition at the Science Festival in Cheltenham in Great Britain, within the framework of which the international finals of FayLab will be held on June 2-7, 2015.
About the five finalists:
Ben Ohion, 28, resident of Jerusalem, PhD student at the Rakah Institute of Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Ben is engaged in researching the basic forces of nature and the basic building blocks of matter, the elementary particles, and the ways in which the forces and particles interact with each other. The building blocks of matter can be studied by creating controlled "explosions" with tremendous energy and measuring the fragments that fly from the explosion: this is the way the large particle accelerator in Geneva (LHC) works.
However, Ben does it in a different way: precise and controlled experiments at low temperatures. According to him in his laboratory he uses modern laser cooling tools to make a cloud of atoms float in a vacuum at a temperature close to absolute zero. When the cloud of atoms undergoes nuclear fission, precise measurement of the fission products opens a window into the exotic world of the nuclear physics of matter. The purpose of the research is to find deviations from the standard theory in order to advance human knowledge of the natural laws that govern the universe.
Avital Dari, 32, PhD student in physics at the Weizmann Institute, who lives in Tel Aviv. Avital researches elementary particles and at the same time is a singer in the field of classical music and performs throughout the country. According to her, particle physics is a fascinating field whose goal is to explain the basic laws of nature, which dictate all the physical phenomena we know, as well as the evolution of the universe. But the world of particles, it turns out, is far from any simple intuition and provides us with quite a few surprises. The study of particles in the last century reveals to us a picture according to which there are a variety of "creatures", i.e. a multitude of particles that behave according to the laws of quantum mechanics and special relativity.
About three years ago, the particle called the Higgs boson was discovered, after which they had been searching for almost fifty years. Even if the discovery of the Higgs confirms our understanding of the mechanism of action of the particles at the beginning of the universe, there are still some fundamental questions for which the scientific community has no answers. The Higgs boson may be related to one or more of these questions. Although the Higgs has finally been discovered, many of its properties are still unexplored and many efforts are being made to use the Higgs to uncover clues about the unknown parts of the universe. In her research group, Derry examines possible models that may answer these fundamental questions and tries to understand their implications and develop ways to verify or disprove them experimentally.
Amir Weizman, 33, graduated with a bachelor's and master's degree in materials engineering from Ben Gurion University of the Negev, an expert in metals and "smart" materials and is engaged in research and development in the medical device industry. Amir is a physics and science enthusiast and active in various internet groups dealing with popular science and science communication.
Today, Amir deals with materials and process technologies at the start-up company "Mikrotech Medical Technologies" which develops miniature sensors that are implanted in blood vessels and enable the measurement of local blood pressure values and their transmission wirelessly using advanced ultrasound technologies. According to him, diseases and various medical complications such as liver, heart and lung diseases sometimes lead to a local increase in blood pressure that cannot be detected by measuring the general blood pressure in the body. The company's sensors allow long-term monitoring and measurement of the local pressure values and, in the process, control over the progress of the disease, without any need for an invasive procedure. The advanced sensor is a passive sensor that does not require any energy source and excels in tiny dimensions that allow implantation in small and delicate blood vessels. It is therefore an innovative sensor that allows listening to the body.
Lev Tal Or, is on the path to what he defines as a "doctor of the stars": he is a doctoral student in stellar physics at Tel Aviv University. His research focuses on questions such as are we alone? Could it be that besides Earth there are other planets in the milky way worthy of life? And if so, where are they?
Lev, married + two living in Modi'in, was born in Moscow, behind the Iron Curtain to a devout Zionist family. He acquired the attraction to space exploration as a child when he received children's books from his father that dealt with the history of space exploration and the competition to conquer the moon. Lev is an apple that did not fall far from the tree, he is the son and grandson of physics teachers and the grandson of one of the pioneers of space medicine of the Soviet Union. According to him, in his doctoral thesis he gets to fulfill a childhood dream and engage in astronomy. As we know, the sun is only one of billions of stars in the Milky Way, and in his lecture at the final of FeyLab Israel, he will tell about the discovery of planets orbiting those distant stars, which he studies using the Doppler effect of light waves.
Elad Shleifer, 28, has a qualified degree in physics specializing in nanoscience and nanotechnology. As part of his studies for a doctorate in physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Elad deals with the acceleration of protons obtained from the interaction of a powerful laser with plasma. The results of the research show an improvement in the ability to accelerate at a given laser intensity, thanks to smart nanometer targets from which the plasma is formed, made of water at a temperature of -170°C. A future application of his research includes the creation of a compact proton accelerator that will serve as an available means of targeted therapy for complex cancers.
The laser systems that Oved Elad works with have an instantaneous power (for a short period of time) in the range between 1 terawatt and 1 petawatt (the power closest to the electricity consumption of the entire world). Elad made many collaborations with different laboratories in the world, including laboratories in Korea, Germany, the USA and Italy. At the same time, Elad is involved in teaching undergraduate physics students and serves as the main instructor in a physics laboratory for first year students. Teaching is part of his worldview, according to which the beauty of experimental physics and his passion for it must be passed on. Elad is married and a father to Geva, lives in Jerusalem and loves to travel the world with his wife Yael.
2 תגובות
So what is important in the world?
save elephants?
"Save" the ozone?
Save the rainforests?
Towards the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century we already know that if we fix man we will fix the world.
So what parameter is missing? that in addition to absolute laws that we have discovered there is another law, more hidden, we do not see it directly. This law is called the bail law. This law is the law that binds man not only through his actions but through his thoughts and desires to the system from which the results (yes the results) to this world dangle.
We will reach a time when we will understand that there is a world of results and there are roots. And as in everything (and there is no philosophy here at all) only if we know the laws of nature and how they dangle from those roots, then we can control and influence our destiny.
And in the meantime - nature laughs at us, we observe the results and try to associate them with the causes.
If we only know how to perfect our sense, upgrade our perception, calibrate our awareness, then not only will we be able to call those roots, but also activate them.
The end of the act is thought first, and when the method for that perfection and upgrading of man is discovered, then it will be considered a real paradigm for understanding the law of nature that, although we humans experience it in multiple changes and forms, it is one.