Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Physics Brainteaser Posters

It appears that the Institute of Physics has produced "physics brainteaser" posters that are now up in various public transportation in several cities in N. Ireland.

The poster campaign, Transport Yourself with Physics, was all about getting the public to engage with the subject, said Alison Hackett, policy officer with the institute.

The institute, with the support of the Government’s Discover Science and Engineering programme, organised the campaign, which was launched to coincide with Science Week Ireland.

The posters are now visible on buses and trains in Galway, Cork, Limerick and Waterford. In Dublin they are installed along Dart and Arrow train services and on Dublin Bus. About 200 buses in Northern Ireland have posters in place, Ms Hackett said.

If I recall correctly, a similar campaign was also done somewhere in Massachusetts a while back, where physics posters were on buses.

While I certainly like such a thing, I would also like to see posters linking specific discovery or advancement in physics that led to things like the iPhone, MRI, etc.. etc.. i.e. linking physics to things that the public use everyday. Most people do not realize how they use discoveries in physics. Rather than make some general statement about its usefulness, it would be even more fascinating if one could simply show the "chain of events" that led from one thing all the way to its application and device.

Zz.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

yes, like GR and GPS, QT and the laser...I agree