Students visit the Physics at Work exhibition at the University of Cambridge

On Thursday 18th September 40 year 10 Folkestone Girls students and 20 Harvey Grammar Boys set off at 8.40am from a cold and wet Folkestone towards the University of Cambridge to attend their “Physics at Work” activities.

Thankfully we arrived to clear skies and were able to picnic in the grounds of the Cavendish Laboratory complex.

We were separated into three groups to attend three different sets of workshops.  We enjoyed presentations on the very big (views of our Universe as seen by the James Webb Telescope) and the very small (the changing colours of nanoparticles). Pupils were also lucky enough to see first hand ideas from the GCSE curriculum, such as how we use electromagnetic waves and medical tracers, and talks from current PhD students about superconductivity and detecting muons.  Other fascinating workshops included ideas from industry - we heard about the software that programmed the Mars Ingenuity helicopter and how to print an expiry date on an egg.

We all left having learnt something new and were inspired by the current innovations in Science in the world around us - so much so that we didn’t even mind the 7pm finish to the day!