The ever-popular Saturday Morning Lecture Series attracted a record crowd this month - around 135 high school students and community members attempted to pack themselves into the auditorium on Saturday, November 14. The series is jointly organized by TRIUMF, UBC and SFU, and it is not uncommon for the series to attract large crowds; over the years its profile and reputation have grown so that there is rarely a less than full auditorium each month. This month's turnout, however, blew away any previous record attendance. Any existing aisles disappeared as folding chairs were brought out. By 10:30am students were standing on the stairs outside the auditorium straining to hear the lecturer.
Topics for this month's lectures were, Dark Matter and Dark Energy by Ludo van Waerbeke (Department of Physics and Astronomy, UBC) and Nanoscale Optics: Making Light Go Through Tiny Holes by Karen Kavanagh (Department of Physics, SFU).
In Van Waerbeke's presentation he explained that only 4% of the Universe is made of normal matter and the remaining 96% escapes direct detection. Nonetheless, cosmologists are able to observe the effects of dark energy and dark matter on the dynamics of the universe and on the motion of galaxies. His presentation delved into questions such as "Is 96% of the universe really made of dark stuff?" and "what is the connection with fundamental physics?" Van Waerbeke also presented the prospects for future research in this field.
In Kavanagh's presentation, she asked the crowd perplexing questions such as, "Why does light travel through windows and not through walls," "How small can we make a hole in a wall and still have light pass through," and "If the wall is made out of gold does this make a difference?". She also introduced the audience to a technique called focused ion beam (FIB) milling, which allows scientists to make nanometer scale patterns and holes in gold and letters for printing in very small books. Kavanagh impressed her audience by showing a slide of the world's smallest book, Teeny Ted's Tale, which measured only 2 μm!
In response to such a great turnout, Dr. Stan Yen, Saturday Morning lecture Series organizer said, "I'm wondering if the topic, Dark Energy and Dark matter attracted such a large crowd. It was so busy, I couldn't even get into the auditorium myself!" Asked why the lectures have become so popular over the last few years, Stan concluded, "Not only do our speakers present on topics at the cutting edge of research, the topics themselves cover a gamut of subjects, ranging from practical applications like fuel cells, to medical imaging, and photonics, to esoteric ideas about subatomic particles, neutron stars and the Big Bang - there's something for everyone. The speakers also do an excellent job of presenting their material at a level comprehensible to high school students and members of the public."
He added that if crowds continue to be this size, overflow rooms with video will be provided to allow everyone to enjoy the talks.
The lecture series will resume again after the Christmas holidays on Saturday, January 16, running from 10am - 12pm. Gaelen Marsden from the UBC Department of Physics and Astronomy will be presenting, BLAST: Probing the star formation history of the universe from a balloon, and JJ Kavelaars from the NRC Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics will be presenting, Postcards from the edge of the Solar System.
For more information on the Saturday Morning Lecture Series, see http://www.triumf.info/public/students/lectures.php.
-- Meghan Magee, Communications Assistant