On Saturday the 31st, 2014, Marijan Bišćan, Đuro Drobac, Zlatko Kregar, Petar Popčević and Ana Smontara participated in a manifestation ”A Day For Science”, organised by the Fran Galović High School in Koprivnica. (see more) ”A Day For Science”, is the title of a new project of the Fran Galović High School in Koprivnica (Photo 1), launched in order to promote and popularise the science. During the whole day, on Saturday the 31st 2014, on Fran Galović High School premises, the visitors of all age interactively participated, according to their affinities, in many activities connected to physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, electrotechnics and psychology. Scientist from renowned Croatian institutions prepared, together with students, a lot of lectures, workshops and interactive experiments, which enabled the visitors to become more familiar with many scientific contents in an attractive and funny way.

A long time collaboration on popularisation of physics with the legendary Koprivnica physics teacher, professor Ljubomir Car, as well as with his younger colleague, professor Danijel Kolarić (both had made their diploma work at the Institute of Physics) resulted with the offer from the Fran Galović High School to participate in the manifestation, and our scientists, dr. Marijan Bišćan, dr. Đuro Drobac, dr. Zlatko Kregar, dr. Petar Popčević and dr. Ana Smontara actively participated in the realisation of the manifestation programme (Photo 2).

Dr. Đuro Drobac, who had already given a lot of popular scientific lectures the Fran Galović High School, prepared on this occasion a lecture ”Electromagnetic bath”. In it dr. Drobac talked about the natural Earth’s electric and magnetic fields, in which we live, about their possible influence on our lives, in order to make a bit clearer the myths following these fields (Photos 3 and 4).

As the 2014 is the International Year of Crystallography, dr. Petar Popčević gave a lecture ”Crystallography and quasicrystals – an example of the shift of the scientific paradigm”. In this lecture a very interesting form of matter – quasicrystals was presented. The discovery of quasicrystals in 1984 raised a lot of controversy because they exhibit forbidden symmetry and because of a lot of curiosities, but finally, in 2011, a Nobel prize in chemistry was awarded to the Israeli Daniel Shechtman for discovery of quasicrystals (Photo 5).

Dr. Marijan Biščan and dr. Zlatko Kregar performed, within the workshop ”Vacuum around us” many explanatory experiments with the idea to promote the concept of vacuum in education and elsewhere (Photos 8a to 8e). This Workshop is a joint project of the Croatian Vacuum Society and the Institute of Physics.

Photo 1. ”A Day For Science” announcement.

Photo 2. Left to right: Ivan Orehovec (participant at the International Astronomy Olympiad), dr. Petar Popčević (lecturer), David Prelogović (participant at the International Physics Olympiad and Bronze medal winner at the International Astronomy Olympiad), dr. Ana Smontara, Klaudija Molnar and dr. Đuro Drobac (lecturer).

Photo 3. Introductory speech of the Fran Galović High School director mr. Vjekoslav Robotić.

Photo 4. Visitors of ”A Day For Science” during lecture…

Photo 5. Dr. Đuro Drobac during the lecture ”Electromagnetic bath”.

Photo 6. Dr. Đuro Drobac after the lecture in discussion with pupils, Ivan Orehovec and David Prelogović.

Photo 7. Dr. Petar Popčević during lecture ”Crystallography and quasicrystals – an example of the shift of the scientific paradigm”.

Photo 8 (a to e). Dr. Marijan Biščan and dr. Kregar performing the experiments on vacuum for the visitors of all age.

Photo 8b.

Photo 8c.

Photo 8d.

Photo 8e.

More…