Recent Outreach Activities

Congratulations to our three 2022 PhD Thesis Prize Winners.

Congratulations to our three 2022 thesis prize winners:

Springer Thesis Prize

Recognising outstanding PhD research - Arnau Brossa Gonzalo

Winton Thesis Prize

Recognising outstanding astrophysical research - Ben Cooke

Faculty of Science Thesis Prize (Physics)

Recognising outstanding research from across the faculty - Sam Holt

Our second year PhD students showcased their research in a poster session on the Physics concourse on Wednesday 18th May. PhD students are really the powerhouse of research in the department and it was great to hear all about the fantastic progress they are making. We awarded poster prizes to Luke Smith (1st place), Manisha Islam and John Pontin (joint runners up) for their particularly fascinating, clear and enthusiastic poster presentations. Many thanks to all who took part in the event.

In outreach & engagement news, a team of Physics staff led by Oksana Trushkevych (including Gavin Bell, Rachel Edwards, Tim Cunningham and Sue Burrows) presented “Resonate: a string, a concert hall, a universe” for the on-campus Resonate festival, the culmination of the University's celebrations for Coventry City of Culture.

The word resonate was on everyone’s lips, but people did not really talk about resonance in the physics sense of the word (there are some pretty iffy technical definitions even in the most reputable online dictionaries!). So the team set out to correct this and prepared an interactive lecture-performance, drawing on their current research as well as their teaching on The Science of Music module for IATL. PhD students from the Ultrasound group helped to move equipment and instruments, such as theremin and laser harp, to the Arts Centre’s Studio Theatre, and Gentian Mouron-Adams (a Physics undergraduate) demonstrated the Rubens tube. We talked about bridges, earthquakes, musical instruments, concert halls, MRI, seeing resonance, seeing with resonance, using resonance to hear... Activities included “singing” with balloons, “feeling” a piece of original music by Gavin through balloons and a “decipher the message” challenge relying on the natural reverberation of our teaching labs. We celebrated Delia Derbyshire, the electronic music pioneer from Coventry, who created the original Dr Who theme. We also talked about stars singing (actual stars, not celebs, and why we can’t hear them) and the universe being a set of resonances (well, if you are a string theorist). The event was aimed at children 8+ and received very positive feedback from attendees, young and grown up, who all made a lot of noise during and after the show.