Kent and Discovery Planet open innovative community space in Ramsgate
On 10 March, the innovative and welcoming community space was opened, where regular interactive workshops delivered by research scientists from Kent will take place over the coming years. The space opening was timed to coincide with British Science Week 2022 (11-20 March), a ten-day celebration of science, technology, engineering and maths.
The hands-on workshops for school children and members of the community launched with a free three-day event called Light Fantastic, which explores the amazing properties of light. The Light Fantastic sessions were delivered by Kent’s Applied Optics Group (Dr Adrian Bradu, Dr. George Dobre, Dr. Mike Hughes, Dr. Manuel Marques, NETLAS PhD Students) Alejandro Martinez Jimenez and Gopika Venugopal and touched on the fact that light science has many medical applications, such as enabling an examination of people’s eyes. There were 500 participants over the three days, including 242 students between the ages of 8-14 from nine schools and over 100 members of the public.
Alejandro Martinez, President of Optica Chapter at Kent said:
"Building a periscope and later enjoying a light maze using mirrors and beam splitters, this activity allows the children to have some fun and learn science! In my opinion I think this kind of outreach events are important during our PhD. At first, we need to help with the organization and design the event. This gives us a perspective in how we should organize our events, where to make publicity and who to contact. Once the event is ongoing we must talk in a non-technical environment, speak in-person to a general audience about our research, which is always a step more to express ourselves. All these skills together are quite valuable for the PhD students and also is important keep connection with the society”
