Welcome you all to 2019, hope you had good holidays.
Outreach program was one of the most highlighted event during last year. OSA-SPIE student chapter arranged multiple school outreach programs both in Canberra and rural Australia. We received grant from SPIE to conduct boot camp. The program was intended to invite school students to have hands on experience with optical components. The boot camp was conducted using National youth Science forum 2019 platform. There were two different boot camp sessions on 4th and 18th of Jan, around 50 students attended each session.
The boot camp was aimed to provide basic understanding of diffraction, interference and resonance. With the use of mini ripple tank and small presentation, we demonstrated basic properties of light. Later, students had hands on experience to use optical components to obtain interference and diffraction. Thanks to Andrew Papworth, we were able to build Fabry-Perot Interferometer to show resonance. This gave picture of frequency space and applications of resonance in real world.
As part of the boot camp they were invited to research labs, and to have a quick peek of what experimental research looks like. Hopefully, some of them embark on this research carrier. Many students said, they never had opportunity to learn light properties in practical.
“The joy in the student eyes are worth more than thousand words” – Shridhar Manjunath
Very good start to this year activities, let us keep the spirits up and continue on the good work from last year.
Optica & SPIE Student Chapter @ The Australian National University 