Imagining Einstein

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Imagining Einstein - Physics at the Scifest

The World Year of Physics will form part of the celebrations at Sasol SciFest as the festival joins the science world in celebrating the anniversary of Einstein's famous publication on E=mc².

An eclectic mix of local scientists are getting ready to mingle with their
international counterparts and a lot of very bright schoolchildren at this
year's national festival of science, engineering and technology, which takes place from March 16 to 22 in Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape of South Africa.

"In terms of the diversity of activities, there's nothing like Sasol SciFest
anywhere in the world," says Case Rijsdijk, a Scifest board member. "There are over 600 events, including a staggering number of hands-on workshops, lots of interactive exhibitions, and speakers who are world leaders in their fields, including Nobel Prize winners. There's something for everyone from preschoolers to their grandparents."

Searching for other worlds

To mark the fact that 2005 is the International Year of Physics, this year SciFest is bringing out a prominent African-American astrophysicist, Professor Gibor Basri of the University of California, a world expert on failed stars, also known as brown dwarfs.

In his SciFest talk on Friday, March 18, Basri will be discussing humanity's
search for other worlds, particularly those that might resemble Earth. Basri
is co-investigator in the NASA Kepler mission that may be able to answer
this question within a few years. He will also be debating the next steps in
our quest to learn whether we are alone in the galaxy.

"South African scientists have been world leaders in niche areas," explains
Rijsdijk, who will be running the popular Science Olympics at the festival
again this year. "But what we've been lacking are appropriate role models
and a person like Gibor Basri can reinforce the perception that South
Africans can do it themselves."

Exploring the stars is a booming field in South Africa, which has just built
SALT (the Southern African Large Telescope) in Sutherland in the Western
Cape to take advantage of its ideal geographical position, clear night skies
and lack of light pollution. When SALT opens later this year, it will be the
largest telescope in the southern hemisphere. South Africa is also one of
the global bidders for the massive $1-billion (R6,14-billion) square
kilometre array radio-telescope project.

"What SciFest does is highlight local and international role models,"
suggests Rijsdijk, who is affiliated with the SA Institute of Physics. "And
it's working: we are beginning to grow a core of talented black scientists
including UCT high-energy physicist Zeblon Vilakazi and astronomer Thebe
Medupe - who spoke at last year's festival and showed his documentary,
Cosmic Africa."

The cyclic universe model

Another guest speaker who, like Gibor Basri, has a keen interest in the
universe just happens to be a local son made good. Physicist Neil Turok grew up in exile in East Africa after his father was jailed for supporting the then-banned African National Congress.

Professor Turok now holds the chair of mathematical physics at Cambridge
University in the UK, is a world leader in the field of theoretical
cosmology and as a keen surfer, has created the African Institute for
Mathematical Sciences just strolling distance from the famous Surfer's
Corner beach at Muizenberg in Cape Town (www.aims.ac.za).

Turok is considered one of the pioneers of the cyclical universe model. In
collaboration with a colleague at Princeton University in the USA, Turok
argues that the event we think of as the Big Bang occurred when two
complex multi-dimensional structures known as branes clashed into each
other - a claim full of complicated mathematics and likely to trigger heated
debates whenever astronomers meet. Turok will be giving a SciFest lecture on the search for a complete history of the cosmos on Monday, March 21.

Blowing up rockets

The annual French joie de vivre will be provided by Christophe Scicluna and Arnaud Leroy, who will blow up rockets and present a new series on communication from semaphore to satellite.

They will also be resurrecting the old semaphore in the grounds of Fort Selwyn in a daily demonstration to honour the Chappe brothers, who
caused a sensation with the first commercial semaphore system near Paris.

"Soon, there were semaphore signalling systems covering the main
cities of France," Scicluna recounts. "Semaphore signalling spread to Italy,
Germany and Russia -- and all the way to the tip of Africa to good old
Grahamstown!"

But like all new technologies, he says, it wasn't all plain sailing: "Semaphores weren't very successful in England because of the fog and smog caused by the Industrial Revolution -- and in Grahamstown because of the heat haze."

Scicluna and Leroy will also run daily afternoon workshops on how to build micro-rockets of cardboard, propelled by a safe powder engine, which can reach a height of 100m.

If you enjoy being creative, join the Astronomical Workshops by the South African Astronomical Observatory where you will design binoculars, telescopes and rockets. The South African Astronomical Observatory also has a workshop in which learners can have a lot of fun while being educated at the same time when learning to build and launch various types of rockets.

The MTN Science Centre from Cape Town will be showing their popular Great Inventions exhibit of great South Arican innovations while science actor David Muller will be giving three performances of his play Imagining Einstein, tracking his days as a miserable and unsuccessful student to his spectacular miracle year in 1905 when he made four separate world-shaking discoveries.

Hands on

On a less theoretical and more practical note, Sivuyile Manxoyi, the science
education officer at the South African Astronomical Observatory in Cape Town, will be returning to SciFest to again present a popular series of three-a-day workshops making binoculars, luxometers, starfinders, moon phase dials and other gadgets at the Albany History Museum.

There will also be a video-conference link-up with the Wrexham Science Festival in the United Kingdom and Grahamstown's St Andrew's College, which is celebrating its 150th anniversary in 2005.

Radio kits, sponsored by the Welsh Development Agency, will be assembled simultaneously by groups of schoolchildren on both continents, and
hopefully they will be able to communicate with each other by the end of the workshop.

On the topic of workshops, iThemba LABS will return with a series of 'Phat' workshops in which electric motors are build (Phat & Phast!) and physics games are played (Phat Physics Game - phunky physics!) and in the fun and innovative Phat Stats workshop the abstract concept of negative and positive charges are turned into reality. Come and see for yourself.

Nanotechnology, music and light

Visiting Sasol SciFest for the third time this year is Dr Zbig Sobiesierski from the University of Cardiff, Wales. His lecture Nanotechnology - the reality of science on a small scale, describes the development and application of structures that are less than 100 nanometres in size - this is one thousand times smaller than the thickness of a human hair and impossible to see with the human eye, even through a microscope.

Also from Wales will be Wendy Sadler with Music vs Machine. Questions like: "Will electronics and technology ever replace the skills of human musicians?" will be discussed in her lecture, using examples from the latest scientific research. The presentation will also include audio and visual demonstrations involving the audience.

Wendy Sadler and Dr Zbig Sobiesierski will also be involved in the Sunset Show School, a science communication course during which science graduates will have the opportunity to train as Festival presenters ("SciFriends") and then join Wendy and Zbig in a series of presentations on science in sport.

Dr Tanya Lake from the University of St Andrew's, Scotland will present a lecture Moving and sorting microscopic particles with a light touch. The lecture will focus on a new technique developed by physicists through which a tightly focused laser beam is used to move microscopic objects without contact. Dr Lake will also host a workshop Tripping light fantastic! In which physics is promoted to the general public. The workshop will demonstrate basic ideas about light.

More information:

Article by Christina Scott. Additional information Alexa Kirsten, Sasol Scifest

For more information contact Alexa Kirsten on 046 603 1172 or email scifestmedia@foundation.org.za

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March 2005	Article