Bringing physics to Rose Park Primary School
18 Nov, 2022
Some of the brightest minds in the physics community are coming to South Australia next week for the first annual conference of TMOS, the ARC Centre of Excellence for Transformative Meta-Optical Systems. On their way, they are stopping at Rose Park Primary School to share their love of optical physics with the school’s year 5 and year 6 students.
TMOS Outreach Director Prof. Igor Aharonovich says, “Technologies that will shape the future come from big physics conferences like this, but the real future currently sits in a classroom dreaming about devices that don’t yet exist. That’s why our outreach program is so important. We need young people to be as passionate about science as we are.”
TMOS researchers will spend the day running hands-on workshops about how light works, designed to meet the Australian Curriculum.
“The thing about studying light is that you can’t unsee it. Once you understand how a rainbow is formed, the concept of refraction is reinforced every time you see white light split into colours. Once you know how reflection works, you use that understanding to get the perfect angle when you’re looking at something behind you. Of all of the physics disciplines, light—or optical physics—is the most fascinating and the most obvious to us day-to-day.”
At the TMOS conference, researchers will share the latest developments in meta-optics, a new field of optical physics that uses nanostructured materials thinner than a piece of cling wrap to replace traditional lenses.
“Light really does impact every field. Some of the researchers attending this conference are developing lenses that could enable your phone to do at home disease detection. Other researchers are developing single-photon emitters that will enable secure quantum communication, preventing data breaches such as the ones that Optus and Medibank customers have experienced recently.”
TMOS will be visiting Rose Park Primary School on Tuesday 22nd November. The Meta Together TMOS conference will run from Wednesday 23rd to Friday 26th of November and is proudly sponsored by Business Events Adelaide and the Government of South Australia.
Media enquiries:
TMOS Engagement Manager Samara Thorn.
Ph. 0421 276 272