A few months ago I organized an event for the Cambridge science festival (CSF), teaching optics to the general public. We got support from the Optical Society of America (OSA), the MIT Museum offered to host the event at their location, and the CSF did all the publicizing. It’s amazing how much support you can get when you volunteer your time! I worked with a couple other students, and we put together a nice set of demos to go with the main topics we wanted to teach. You can see some of it here (in 3D if you have red/cyan glasses) and a fun video i made here.

The preparation was really fun – I spent a few nights in my apartment trying to remember how to wire up basic circuits, making sunset in a jar, and filling a giant fishtank with sugar and water. One night my roommates and I set up the blacklight and painted secret messages on the wall, and another I made diffraction gratings out of pantyhose and tried to explain Fourier Transforms to my friend, hehe. It’s amazing how many questions (”why is the sky blue? how do rainbows work?”) that i thought i knew the answer to, but when i went to explain, I had new questions and had to look deeper to really understand it. Sometimes we think things are simple because they’re basic, and there’s no better way to challenge what you think you know than to teach it to others.

As a result of this event, I was invited to be part of the OSA Student chapter executive and got to meet the CEO of the OSA, who was excited to see what we’re doing and offered her support. I met a lot of people and have a lot of really cool toys in my lab now that will help me explain parts of my research. I guess you know you like your chosen field when the line between fun and work starts to blur…