This Physics Day was essentially a workshop concerned with experimental electron microscopy and theoretical modelling of ‘Extreme Nanowires,’ the smallest nanowires that can be formed down to a single atom width, and also discrete molecules formed on a similar scale. The Physics Day included contributions from four Warwick speakers, including two PhD students, UK speakers Prof. Andrei Khlobystov, Dr. Thomas Chamberlain and Dr. Andrew Morris from the Universities of Nottingham, Leeds and Birmingham respectively, and also the distinguished International Speaker Prof. Kazu Suenaga from the AIST in Tsukuba, Japan. This event was also used as a preamble for the EMAG (Electron Microanalysis and Analysis Group) meeting which was taking place in Warwick during the same week (i.e. 6^th-8^th July).

The Warwick Institute of Advanced Study (IAS) has invited two leading Chinese professors with a theoretical and computational physics background to spend 1 week at the IAS in collaboration with the Warwick Centre for Scientific Computing, the GRP Materials (Multiscale Modelling) and the Department of Physics. Profs. Lin and Guan are senior professors in the Chinese academic environment. Both have returned from outside mainland China in the last 5 years to take up prestigious positions.

The Physics Christmas Lecture held on Wednesday 5th December "How the World Will End" by Boris Gaensicke was even more popular than the first! 250 local residents, school students, alumni and members of the public came and heard Boris' interactive lecture. It was very well received, with typical evaluation comments such as "thoroughly enjoyable" and "very well explained".

Below are two photos from the evening, which capture the interest and enthusiasm from our guests as well as the wonderful atmosphere that Boris created. Further photos can be found here

We are very lucky to have in our department, researchers who can communicate so well with the public, and have drawn in over 450 people to the Christmas Lecture Series so far.

The final lecture "Physics Tricks and Flying Frogs" by Rachel Edwards and Andy Howes is now fully booked.

On Tuesday 6th December the Physics department held a Christmas Lecture for the public. Teachers, school children and individuals interested in physics made up the 160 people who were excited to hear Daniel Scully talk about his research into neutrinos. Addressing a packed lecture theatre, he explained what different neutrino experiments look for, and the results from CERN that caught the headlines around the world. Together they considered the staggering implications if these results were confirmed and exactly why they caused such a sensation.

The talk was very enthusiastically received with 30 peopple queuing to ask Daniel questions at the end.

The feedback from the public was overwhelmingly positive, with Daniel's excellent communication skills and infectous enthusiasm, inspiring the audience. "Terrific" and "superb" were amongst the feedback.

Daniel has been inundated with requests to speak at further events, such as Cafe Scientifique, local schools and amateur astronomy groups.

If you missed Daniel's talk, you can watch it here.