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recent entries "My take on Thanksgiving" "Belichick used results from dynamic programming!" "I know he's not to blame, but..." "In sickness and in health..." "Fall Beautiful"
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Jul 24, 2009 the light funtastic
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…
7 Responses To This Entry:Post A Response
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In the video, you used a real diamond? That thing is huge! How many karats was it?
(I am afraid to even ask how much it cost)
Posted by: nakoruru on August 5th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
haha, obviously i’m kidding, it’s fake. my sister found them at the Dollar store in Canada
Posted by: Laura on August 5th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Request: Post a YouTube video, showing how you make diffraction gratings out of pantyhose.
=)
Posted by: nakoruru on August 5th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Summer vacation is nearly over, and the Ninja is back!
Cute video. What does “making sunset in a jar” mean?
Posted by: ninja on August 8th, 2009 at 10:47 am
I was wondering that too. I tried looking up “making sunset in a jar” via Google, but did not find any particular meaning for that expression.
Any insight, Laura?
Posted by: nakoruru on August 11th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
I bet you thought I was ignoring your comments, but i’m not! i just had a hard time getting a good video of the diffraction patterns, since they have a huge range in intensity (they’re Fourier Transforms!). So… drumroll…. here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BnlSagWBig
All i’m doing is holding the pantyhose in front of a laser pointer and stretching it.
Posted by: Laura on August 16th, 2009 at 9:20 pm
As for the “sunset in a jar”, here’s the best picture I can find:
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/content/kitchenscience/exp/why-is-the-sky-blue/
but I never had much success with this one. Theoretically, you should see blue scattering at the edges, and red at the end.
Posted by: Laura on August 16th, 2009 at 9:28 pm