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Scientists rapidly get the measure of graphene

Scientists in China have devised a fast and cheap way to find the

thickness of graphene and similar materials, using an optical microscope to measure the red, green and blue components of light as these are reflected from their surfaces. Many unusual properties of such materials rely on their thickness. The research is reported in IOP Publishing’s journal Nanotechnology. ioppublishing.org

Sound sculptor receives CERN residency award

Sound artist Bill Fontana has been awarded an arts residency at CERN, the Prix Ars Electronica Collide@CERN. The award includes a two-month residency at CERN, a month at Futurelab, Linz, and €10,000. Fontana, a San Francisco-based artist, creates sound installations in settings such as Chicago’s Millennium Park (pictured).www.resoundings.org

Physics in a flash

December 2012

Physics outreach is rewarded

Being involved in physics communica-tion is unlikely to lead to instant stardom but it is worthwhile, Prof. Jim Al-Khalili told the audience at an event organised by the IOP’s Physics Communicators Group. He was the guest speaker at the final of the Very Early Career Physics Communicator Awards, held at the Institute on 20 November.

Before helping to choose the win-ner among the four finalists, he spoke about his experience of making a BBC Four documentary series on quantum mechanics. “It was thought that put-ting quantum mechanics in the title of the series would in itself be too scary for people, so it ended up being called Atom,” he said. “The challenge we had was to get across the wonder of quan-tum mechanics and just how important it is as a scientific theory, along with all the fun and the mystery.”

Making all of this accessible had included using a multistorey tower to illustrate quantum jumps (“I thought it was really cheesy but audiences really liked it”), moving virtual graphs around with his hand, and floating old photos of famous physicists who attended the piv-otal Solvay Conference as if they were ghosts reappearing from the past. “We managed in three hours to talk about quantum mechanics to such an extent that I haven’t made another programme with that level of complexity,” he said.

“This was the first series that alerted people at the BBC that BBC Four allows us to explore maybe more difficult ideas than BBC One and Two. By 2010 the BBC had commissioned more science and that’s when we had Brian Cox pro-ducing his first Wonders of the Solar System series and that just blew peo-ple away. Atom was watched by about a million people on BBC Four; Brian was getting six or seven million on BBC Two – people who wouldn’t normally engage

with science documentaries.”While science on BBC Four draws

the kind of viewers who are already very interested in science, the higher budget, polished programmes that Prof. Cox makes are attracting a whole new audience, he said. “Brian and I are not in competition; he gets to more interesting places and has larger audi-ences, but I get stuck into the nitty-gritty science on BBC Four, and I’m hop-ing that that’s something that won’t change. Luckily science is still seen as cool and something that the BBC wants to continue to commission.”

When asked for advice on getting into television work, he said: “You start small. It’s being involved and network-ing. The BBC’s science unit go along to the Cheltenham Science Festival every year and that’s a very good place to get to know people. It’s not that different from applying for research grants – you just have to keep trying. But it’s not very often that someone is discovered and there’s instant stardom.”

Asked if doing public engagement had helped or harmed his career, Prof. Al-Khalili said that when he started – by doing the IOP’s schools and colleges lecture tour in 1997 – he was strongly advised against it, but attitudes had changed. “Now everyone I work with says ‘this is an important job that you’re doing’.” But PhD students still needed encouragement from their supervisors that it was OK to spare some time for science outreach, he said.

After presentations by the four final-ists – including PhD student Evelyn Johnston, researcher Andrew Steele, and PhD student Julian Stirling – research associate Ben Still was cho-sen as the winner of the first prize of £250. All four were presented with certificates by the IOP’s curriculum and diversity manager pre-19, Clare Thomson, who judged the entries along with Prof. Al-Khalili.

Each of the runners-up said how impressed they were by the other presentations and how much they had enjoyed the competition. Still said how grateful and surprised he was to be shortlisted and then to win. He said: “It’s nice to get recognition for some of the things I have been doing and to know that it’s appreciated.”l February Interactions will carry a pro-file of Ben Still.

“Science programmes are something that the BBC still wants to commission.”

Heather Pinnell reports on an event to encourage aspiring communicators.

Prof. Jim Al-Khalili speaking at a prize-giving for physics communicators held in November.

Interactions December 2012

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Tanzania held its first Young Scientists Tanzania (YST) competi-tion and exhibition in Dar es Salam in October, attracting 300 students and 100 teachers from throughout the country as well as members of the public. It was opened by Tanzania’s minister for communica-tion, science and technology, Prof. Makame Mbarawa.

The event was inspired by and modelled on the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition held annually in Dublin, in which young people compete to produce the best science projects.

IOP honorary fellow Tony Scott, who co-founded the Irish exhibition, went to the YST award ceremony. He said that he was delighted to see the event taking root in Tanzania. The idea grew from Tanzanian scholars visiting Ireland as part of a training programme of the Combat Diseases

of Poverty Consortium centred on NUI Maynooth. While mentoring students undertaking development-themed projects for the Irish competition, the scholars were so impressed that they asked whether something like it could be established in Tanzania.

YST was sponsored by Irish Aid

and the Pearson Foundation. The IOP sponsored the Institute of Physics Award for Best Physics Project, which went to Witness Shirima, Alexander Ngatuni and Irene Chuwa of Rau School, Kilimanjaro, for their project “Application of electromagnets in an electric bell”. It was judged and pre-

sented by Laurie Mansfield, the IOP’s international co-ordinator for The Gambia, who also helped to judge the other categories. The overall winners were Aisha Nduku, Monica Shinina and Nengai Moses, from Kibosho Girls School, Kilimanjaro, who will attend the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition in Dublin in January.

The IOP’s international co-ordina-tor for Tanzania, Joe Brock, co-ordi-nates the Institute’s work through the Morogoro Physics Centre there, and the Institute’s assistant in Tanzania, Obeid Sitta, welcomed visitors to the IOP’s stand at the exhibition, where experiments were on display.

Some students had travelled up to 30 hours to take part in the event, which focused particularly on social themes such as active citizenship and the fight against poverty.www.youngscientists.co.tz

Scientists can influence government policy but it takes well organised campaigns to really be effective. This was the message of a workshop,“An Introduction to Science Policy”, hosted by the IOP on 15 November.

The event was organised by the think-tank Newton’s Apple and the IOP and was open to all, but was

aimed particularly at PhD students and postdocs. The chair of Newton’s Apple, Michael Elves, said that its purpose was to give participants an insight into how the science-policy interface operates and to stimulate people to get involved in science policymaking.

Former MP and select committee chairman Ian Gibson said that very few MPs had a science background and this was unlikely to change, given the time pressures on scien-tists and the difficulty of combining

a research career with politics. “The debate is about how we get more people like you into the decision-making process,” he said.

The IOP’s director of education and science, Prof. Peter Main, said that professional bodies such as the IOP provided one of the best routes for starting to get involved in policy work, particularly for young people. He explained that the IOP responds to consultations from government and offers advice, suggests names of experts when asked, publishes

reports, and seeks to influence poli-cymakers through networking and through the media. Widespread media coverage of the IOP’s report on girls and A-level physics had helped the IOP to exert pressure for school inspections to include gender issues, for example.

The workshop also heard from Chris McFee, head of civil contin-gencies in the Government Office for Science, and Tim Lovett, pub-lic affairs director of the British Beekeepers Association.

Physicists learn to be influential

Obeid Sitta welcomes young visitors to the IOP’s stand at Young Scientists Tanzania.

Young scientists compete in Tanzania

Interactions December 2012

Nuclear physics community should grow, says IOP reportNuclear physics research in the UK is of high quality but the community is too small to meet all the require-ments placed upon it, according to an IOP report, A Review of UK Nuclear Physics Research. At its launch in October, physicists discussed the report’s recommendations, includ-ing a proposal for a new theory group to add to the two existing groups at the universities of Manchester and Surrey, and a Centre of Excellence (COE) to act as a focus and voice for all the UK’s nuclear physics groups.

Prof. Bill Gelletly, who chaired the panel conducting the review, said the community had to be brought together to play to its strengths. He

told the meeting that it consisted of around 55 academics with perma-nent positions, plus PhD students and postdocs, with only about seven permanent academics working in theoretical nuclear physics. Their output and quality were high when compared to those from competitor countries or comparable fields in the UK, he said. But increased funding was needed, particularly as nuclear physics had not shared in the gen-eral uplift in science spending prior to the cuts made since 2007.

The report says that current fund-ing is not enough to “maintain excel-lence in basic nuclear physics, allow the subject to diversify, improve

capability in theory and play a full role in appli-cations” as wel l as to train the peo-ple needed in research, healthcare,

the nuclear industry and defence. It calls on the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) to address this, but says that the community can also take action by establishing a COE whose remit would include overseeing some aspects of PhD training on a UK-wide basis, and pro-

moting nuclear physics.Janet Seed, the STFC’s associate

director of programmes, responded by saying that the STFC did not ring-fence funding for particular fields. It was in the middle of a programmatic review, which would be a science-driven process, she said. She wel-comed the idea of a COE. The report calls for the STFC to negotiate a formal association with the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR), which is about to be built in Germany. Seed said that the STFC was in discussions to become an associate partner of FAIR.

The report can be downloaded from “Publications” at www.iop.org.

A Review of UK Nuclear Physics Research

An Institute of Physics Report | October 2012

3news

More than 40 people took part in a workshop on commercialising inno-vation that was held at Addis Ababa University on 5–9 November. The event, entitled “Entrepreneurship Workshop for Scientists and Engineers in East Africa” was organ-ised by the IOP and the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), in collaboration with the Ethiopian Physical Society.

Since 2005 the IOP and the ICTP have organised eight entrepre-neurship workshops in developing countries and held several others at the ICTP in Trieste, with the content tailored to the level of participants’ experience and knowledge of com-mercialisation. The programme in Ethiopia included talks on the pro-cess of commercialisation such as technology forecasting, financing options, intellectual property issues and taking inventions to market, and practical exercises on developing a business idea.

As well as seasoned speakers from previous workshops, there was input from Ethiopians including Girma Senbeta from the Ethiopian Intellectual Property Office, and Bethlehem Alemu, entrepreneur and founder of soleRebels Footwear, who has won international awards as a businesswoman.

The IOP’s international relations manager, Dipali Bhatt-Chauhan, and the IOP’s director of communi-cations, Beth Taylor, led several ses-sions during the event. Taylor said afterwards: “Many participants in the workshop lack basic resources that we take for granted. Their enthu-siasm is truly inspiring.”

The Scottish economy is benefitting from physics-based business to an even greater degree than the UK as a whole, according to a report com-missioned by the IOP. Physics-based sectors contributed 9.8% of gross value added (GVA) to Scotland’s economy between 2005 and 2010, the report says, while such sectors contributed 8.5% of the GVA of the UK economy overall.

The Importance of Physics to the Scottish Economy, prepared

by Deloitte and published by the IOP in October, also shows that 4.6% of Scotland’s workforce is employed in physics-based sectors, compared to 4% in the UK overall. If productivity is measured in GVA per worker, then physics-based sectors in the UK do better than the average in other businesses and industries (£70,000 as compared to £36,000), but physics-based sectors in Scotland do even better (£78,000 GVA per worker).

While 109,000 people work in physics-based sectors in Scotland, generating £8.5 bn of the GVA, a further 75,000 jobs and £4 bn of GVA can be attributed to the indi-

rect effects of these sectors, such as generating employment in supplier companies or through consumer spending by employees.

In a foreword to the report, the IOP’s president, Prof. Sir Peter Knight, says: “For physics-based businesses to continue to thrive, there must be a strong and broad research base and a ready supply of trained workers for them to call on. There must also be focused sup-port for physics-based businesses through innovative procurement strategies and access to the capital necessary for growth.”

The report can be downloaded from “Publications” at www.iop.org.

India and Nigeria will have IOP branches

Ethiopia hosts IOP workshop

Interactions December 2012

Interactive workshops on everyday experiments, liquid nitrogen, meeting real

scientists and particle physics filled up in advance of a free Festival of Physics held at the University of Plymouth on 17 November by the IOP’s South West Branch. Visitors could also hear talks on physics topics such as planet formation and the physics of superheroes, and for over-18s there was a comedy event entitled All At Sea, by Bright Club.

The Harrie Massey Medal and Prize has been awarded to Anthony Murphy (right) of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, in Australia. The biennial award, which is given jointly by the IOP and the Australian Institute of Physics (AIP), is made for contributions to physics or its applications. Murphy will be presented with the award at the AIP annual congress in December for his “outstanding research in the field of thermal plasmas, in particular his work on computational modelling and measurement techniques and their application to the development of industrial processes”.

A poster about the Higgs boson is due to be sent in December to all IOP-affiliated schools. The two-sided poster explains what the

Higgs is, why it matters and the hunt to find it. Aimed at enthusing school students about particle physics, it is also suitable for a wider audience. IOP intern Richard Millar, Science Committee member Prof. Mark Lancaster and Council member Prof. Brian Foster worked to ensure the accuracy of the text. E-mail tajinder.panesor@iop.org for details.

News in Brief

Workshop participants Tizazu Maresha (left) and Tilahu Tesfaye comparing notes.

Value of physics inScotland is shown

The who, what and why of the journey to discovery...

Higgs boson

A good analogy for how the Higgs boson gives the other particles mass is given by the so-called “political delegate” analogy, which we’ve modified to include one of the world’s most revered physicists.

Imagine a room completely full of delegates, with a door at either end of the room. When Albert Einstein enters the room the delegates cluster around him, feverishly trying to get near enough to speak to him.

This crush of people gives inertia (mass) to the motion of Einstein across the room, making it very difficult for him to start moving and also very difficult for him to stop once going! In contrast, less famous scientists can move across the room without such a large crowd forming around them. These less famous scientists have much less inertia (mass) than Einstein.

HOW DOESIT WORK?

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The property of mass is such an integral part of the Universe, that without the existence of the Higgs field giving the fundamental particles various values of mass then the Universe as we know it wouldn’t exist!

If there were no Higgs mechanism, there would be no galaxies, no stars and no atoms. It is important to realise just how integral the Higgs boson is for the structure of everything familiar and unfamiliar in the Universe around us.

WHY IS IT SO IMPORTANT?

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The Higgs boson has a mass of approximately 10-25kg, about 133 times that of a proton. Albert Einstein’s famous equation “E=mc2” informs us that mass and energy are equivalent (E is energy, m is mass and c is the speed of light).

Using this equation we can calculate how much energy we could extract from a particle of a certain mass, and conversely how much energy

is required to create a particle of a certain mass. Since the mass of the Higgs boson is over a 100 times larger than that of a proton and only a small fraction of the proton’s energy is used to create the Higgs boson, then proton beams of very high energy are required that are provided by the LHC, which accelerates each proton to 0.99999997 of the speed of light.

With the LHC up and running, the analysis of the data output is a formidable task. The Higgs boson can only be measured indirectly through measurement of the particles into which it decays, as it is not a stable particle - it has an expected existence time of less

than a millionth of a billionth of a second! Ascertaining whether the Higgs boson exists is like trying to calculate the weight of a tiger by measuring the tracks it leaves in the mud.

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THE 4TH JULY 2012 WAS A TRULY HISTORIC DAY FOR SCIENCE The elusive Higgs boson seemed to be finally found when a Higgs-like particle was announced as a formal discovery at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research).

This announcement marked the completion of a journey spanning 48 years and extending from the theoretical postulation of the particle through to the construction of the most complicated experimental machine in history to find it.

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THE HIGGS BOSON THEORISTSThe concept of the Higgs boson was born in 1964 when a series of seminal papers by several authors were published, all independently describing very similar mechanisms for the existence of the property of mass for the fundamental particles.

The authors were the theoretical physicists Kibble, Guralnik, Hagen, Englert, Brout and Higgs (whose name became synonymous with the theory).

Peter Higgs is a British physicist who worked in theoretical particle physics at the University of Edinburgh. The prediction of the Higgs boson is his most well-known work, prompting the decades-long search for the postulated particle, whose discovery Higgs was unsure he would see in his lifetime.

On 4th July 2012, the discovery of a new particle was announced in front of an emotional Higgs.

The prediction of the Higgs boson stimulated many experimental searches for the particle.

The Large Hadron Collider (the machine constructed

at CERN that discovered a Higgs-like particle) is the latest incarnation of the large particle colliders that carry out experiments at unimaginably small scales.

THE SEARCH FOR THE HIGGS BOSON

4WHAT IS THE HIGGS BOSON?

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The Higgs boson has captured the minds of the world, but what actually is this particle?

Despite being mistakenly referred to as “the God particle” – it doesn’t tell us anything about how the Universe came into being –

the Higgs boson gives mass to the other known fundamental particles, which taken together form the “Standard Model”, which is a mathematical description of the particles and forces of the Universe at the most fundamental level.

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The discovery of a Higgs-like particle certainly marks the beginning of a new epoch in the history of physics. We know more about the most fundamental level of matter and reality than ever before. The experimental discovery announced on 4th July 2012 demonstrates the predictive power of elegant mathematical theories to describe the Universe.

The next stage of experimentation will be to work out exactly what kind of particle was discovered. There are different possible variants of the Higgs boson, corresponding to different conceptions of reality. It may turn out that the particle discovered corresponds to an exotic and unexpected Higgs boson.

The existence of such a particle may act as a gateway to a whole new level of physics and could point a way toward the solution of problems such as dark matter and quantum gravity. It is likely that the discovery of the Higgs boson is not one of the final pieces in the jigsaw of reality

but an indication that we are standing on the edge of finding a new deeper level of reality than we have ever perceived before.

BEYOND DISCOvERY

THE SEARCH CONTINUES

In this analogy, the delegates are the Higgs field. The other fundamental particles are the various scientists entering the room. This analogy essentially describes how the Higgs mechanism gives things mass.

Remember, more scientific credibility and importance means more mass!

7906 IOP Higgs Poster A0 final AW.indd 1 14/11/12 11:40:20

Higgs BOsON

Particle tracks from a proton-proton collision observed by the Compact Muon Solenoid detector at CERN. The Large Hadron Collider accelerates the protons which collide, creating particles (the yellow lines), including the Higgs boson (which decays immediately, so is not visible). The Higgs boson decays into a pair of Z bosons which themselves decay into a pair of electrons and positrons (the long red lines).

For more information on this poster, please email: tajinder.panesor@iop.org

7906 IOP Higgs Poster A0 final AW.indd 2 14/11/12 11:40:21

Two new branches of the IOP are to be set up, one in India and one in Nigeria, at the request of IOP members in the two countries. The Institute’s Council agreed to the plan at its meeting on 23 November, fol-lowing visits to India and Nigeria in the autumn by IOP representatives.

IOP Council member Ade Ogunsola met members based in India in September, supported by Stephanie Richardson, the IOP’s head of mem-

bership develop-ment, and Raj Jandu, its member services officer.

A similar meet-ing, organised by Ogunsola, was

held in Nigeria in October, attended by IOP president Prof. Sir Peter Knight (pictured) and the IOP’s director of membership and business, John Brindley. While in Nigeria both gave

addresses at a one-day conference at the University of Lagos entitled “The Role of Physics in the Development of a Nation”, organised by the univer-sity’s departments of physics and of electrical and electronics engineering, the IOP and the Nigerian Institute of Physics. Brindley stressed that the new branches would complement, rather than replace, the work of the Indian Physics Association and the Nigerian Institute of Physics.

4 people

NEW MEMBERSGiles Allison, Muhammad Anwar, Rachael Austin, Daryl Beggs, Michael Bennett, Richard Benninger, Stephen Benzies, Mario Bisi, Nicholas Blanchard, Eoin Butler, Daniel Bye, Andrew Cambridge, Andrew Carter, Eulalia Castro Alvaredo, Trevor Chambers, Emma Chapman, Candice Chinneck, Jon Clarke, Michael Collett, Patricia Conder, Pete Coyle, Andrew D’Arcy, Brendan Darrer, Sarah David, Martin Dawson, Alastair Dewar, Nicola Diplock, Christopher Eames, Michela Esposito, Francoise Ethievent, Antony Evans, Steven Everitt, Neil Fachie, Katherine Finn, Michael Finnie, Sarah Fisher, Sonja Franke-Arnold, Mark Gallaway, Robert George, Mark Gould, Naomi Greenough, Ben Griffiths, Jonathan Hallam, Ik Heng, Konstanze Hild,

Adam Hill, David Horsell, Emma Howard, Hannes Huebel, Stephen Hunter, Stuart Ingleby, Jason Jenkins, Pamela Johnston, Stephen Justham, Christopher Kay, Bhavin Khatri, Christian Killow, Daniel Kolb, Jon Lanz, Christopher Lee, Linda Lee, Marion Leibl, Wing-Kai Leung, Nicholas Macey, Katherine Mack, Stephen Mann, Robert McNulty, Demetrius Onoufriou, Renato Pallassini, Robert Palmer, Anup Parikh, Graham Purves, Melanie Rolliston, David Rowley, Sabyasachi Sarkar, Sarah Schuppli-Saegesser, Francois Sfigakis, Gregory Stevens, Begona Vivas-Maiques, Michael Ward, Matthew Watts, Timothy Whitehead, Robert Whitham.

IN MEMORIAMSean Barrett, Cyril Delaney (County

Kildare), Balázs Györffy, Anthony Herbert Hitchcock (Leeds), John Logan Lewis (Malvern), John Lennox Monteith, Michael Parsley, Roy Strand.

ANNOuNcEMENtSl The prize for physics journalism of the IOP and the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) is still open to entries. The award is for a work of journalism that can be accessed by the general public and that covers physics research, related technology, interdisciplinary research including physics, the application of physics in industry, or the work and related lifestyles of physicists, engineers or people working in physics. Entries must have been published in English in the UK in print, broadcast or online between

1 January and 31 December 2012. Entry is open to journalists, people with a recognised qualification in physics, or students of physics or journalism. The prize is a trip to Japan to visit major facilities. For details, visit the news section of the STFC’s website at www.stfc.ac.uk or the IOP’s website at www.iop.org. The closing date is 4 January 2013.

MEMBER NEWSIOP Excellence in Physics Awards were presented on 14 November to Cameron Pringle, an affiliate member at the High School of Dundee, for gaining top marks in his physics Higher, and student member James Matthew, formerly at George Heriot’s School, Edinburgh, for excelling in his physics Advanced Higher. They were among five students to win the award.

notices

Call for nominationsThe Institute of Physics Awards Committee is now seeking nominations for the Institute’s 2013 Awards.

The awards recognise and reward outstanding achievements by physicists working in industry, business and research as well as contributions made to physics outreach and education and the application of physics and physics-based technologies. We particularly welcome nominations for female physicists and physicists from ethnic minorities who are often underrepresented in the nominations that we receive.

Closing date: 21 January 2013Full details of the awards, eligibility and the nomination procedure are available on our website at www.iop.org/about. Alternatively, contact us by e-mailing awards@iop.org or calling +44 (0)20 7470 4831.

INSTITUTE OF PHYSICS AWARDS 2013

Editor Heather Pinnell, Production Editor Alison Gardiner, Art Director Andrew Giaquinto. Institute of Physics, 76 Portland Place, London W1B 1NT, UK. Tel +44 (0)20 7470 4800; fax +44 (0)20 7470 4991; e-mail interactions@iop.org; web http://members.iop.org.

The annual Institute of Physics Environmental Physics Group essay competition is now open

for entries. Entries can cover any aspect of environmental physics and should be

no more than 2000 words long. The competition is open to all but entries

from students are particularly welcome.

Prizes• up to £500 to be won • certificates• the winning entries will also be

considered for publication • �all entrants will receive free IOP

membership for three months

Entries must be original and will be judged on writing quality and content.

Entries and enquiries should be e‑mailed to env.essay@physics.org. Further details can be found at www.iop.org/activity/groups/subject/env/index.html.

Environmental Physics Essay Competition

Closing date: 31 December 2012

Interactions is not published in January: the next issue will be available online in February 2013

Interactions December 2012

5obituary...the director of communications

Since 2004, Interactions has been the main vehicle for the IOP to communicate directly with members. While

our flagship magazine Physics World has brought members news about international developments in physics, Interactions has focused on issues that matter to the physics community, news about the Institute, and news about members.

In an effort to reduce costs, Interactions changed last year to a virtual newspaper accessed through the e-mail that is sent to members each month. The electronic format allows us to collect information on readership, and reveals that only a small minority of members are “clicking through” to the newspaper.

This is a lost opportunity to let members know what their Institute is doing. We asked a consultancy in member communications to conduct a telephone survey of 200 members, and benchmark our publication against those of other societies. The result was a recommendation to change the current format, integrating the Interactions content into a monthly e-bulletin, so that members could read news stories at a glance just by opening their monthly e-mail.

To make that e-mail as attractive as possible, we held a series of focus groups in Bristol, Edinburgh and London in the autumn. Members expressed a range of views, but some common themes included a strong preference for content tailored as much as possible to individual recipients, for example by where they live, or by topics in which they have an interest. Another striking finding was the number of e-mails that members routinely receive from the IOP, which can cause confusion.

As a result, our next step will be a thorough audit of all our electronic communications, to identify any opportunities for rationalisation. Then we’ll test alternative formats with the focus groups and other members and introduce a new e-bulletin in spring 2013. Interactions will continue in its current format until then. All comments would be welcome.

Beth Taylor is the IOP’s director of communications.

John Logan Lewis was born on 23 September 1923 in Reading, where his father worked for the biscuit firm Huntley and Palmers. He attended The Abbey prepara-tory school in Beckenham and, through his math-ematical ability, gained a Major Scholarship to attend Malvern College, where he eventually specialised in mathematics and physics.

The later period of his secondary education during the early war years was dis-rupted when Malvern College was evacuated on two occa-sions, first to Blenheim and later to Harrow, due to the site being requisitioned first by the Admiralty and later by the Telecommunications Research Establishment. Nevertheless he was able to gain entrance to Pembroke College, Cambridge, in 1942 where he became interested in astronomy, founding the Cambridge Astronomical Society which, later in his career, earned him Fellowship of the Royal Astronomical Society. He transferred to Porton Down in 1944 to carry out tank armament research, but after two years began teaching at Eastbourne College. After accepting an invitation to join the staff at Malvern College, where he remained for the rest of his teaching career, he was able to return temporarily to Cambridge to complete his degree course in mathematics and physics.

It was during his periods at Cambridge that he encoun-tered many of the scientists and educationalists who played an important role in his later life. He also became an enthusiastic and accomplished participant in English folk dancing and upon his return to Malvern founded a group, “The Malvern Swordsmen” who continue to per-form tours of the Cotswold villages during the summer months. He also joined the Malvern Scots Club and it was through this club that he met his future wife, Maureen, whom he married in 1952; his two sons, Richard and Anthony, being born in 1955 and 1957 respectively.

In 1955 he was appointed head of the science department at Malvern College and became active in the Association for Science Education, appointed chairman of their Modern Physics Committee in 1960. Before tak-ing up the position of housemaster at Malvern College in 1961 he was able to visit and report on education in a number of countries, including the USSR. This led to an invitation to join the Nuffield Project tasked with design-ing a set of science teaching programmes for the 11–16 year age range, and he soon became associate organ-iser of the whole of the physics project leading up to the O-level examination. During this period he was respon-sible for five experiment books and closely involved in the development of the associated apparatus. He was a chief examiner for the Nuffield O-level examination for the following 25 years and in 1967 he became a mem-ber of the steering committee of the Nuffield Advanced Physics Project.

During the years 1963–66 he served his first term on the Council of the Institute of Physics, and in 1969 he was awarded the Institute’s Bragg Medal for his services to physics education. In the years that followed, his expertise in the teaching of physics was much in demand both at home and overseas. He travelled widely and served many organisations in a voluntary capacity, includ-ing the editorial board of the journal Physics Education. He acted as secretary for the International Commission on Physics Education and later

fulfilled a similar role for the Committee on the Teaching of Science of the International Council of Scientific Unions. He was chairman of the Association of Science Education 1976–77. In 1978 he was awarded the Queen’s Silver Jubilee medal for services to education and was presi-dent of the education section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1980 when he was awarded an OBE.

Following his retirement from Malvern College in 1983 he was elected again to the Council of the Institute of Physics and served as vice-president for education until 1988. For the next 10 years he served in an unfamiliar role as honorary treasurer and non-executive director on the board of Institute of Physics Publishing Ltd. During this period he also provided an invaluable service as treasurer to the European Physical Society, resulting in a regularisation and significant improvement of its finan-cial position. In recognition of his many contributions to the physics community he was appointed an honorary fellow of the Institute of Physics after completing his term in office in 1999. However, this did not mark the end of his active life, as he undertook another major activity that extended well into his eighties: the development of a sixth-form course that equipped students with practical skills useful in the wider world. At one stage material from this course was adopted by 1500 schools.

John Lewis was an incredibly energetic and enthusi-astic person with great organisational ability. He was adept at bringing the most appropriate people together at meetings and conferences so as to ensure progress was made. He had many passions as well as teaching physics, including folk dancing and bell ringing and he pursued them all with great vigour. Always claiming to be shy, he was in practice extremely interactive and an excellent communicator. He was always positive and encouraging to his friends and colleagues, whatever their station or rank, and his influence will be greatly missed well beyond the physics education community that he served so well.

John Logan Lewis died on 11 October 2012 aged 89. He is survived by his wife, two sons, six grandchildren and one great-grandchild.Remembered by Eric Jakeman

John Logan Lewis (1923–2012)

Interactions December 2012

Letter from

6 reflections

Why science must profit from 4G sale

The government is about to be given the chance to revolutionise science and engineering in the UK. At the beginning of 2013 the 4G spectrum will be auctioned, bringing superfast mobile internet access and up to £4 bn for the Treasury.

Together with the charity Nesta – and with support from Prof. Sir Peter Knight, Prof. Brian Cox, Prof. Lesley Yellowlees, Prof. Sir Andre Geim and many others – we in the Campaign for Science and Engineering (CaSE) are campaigning for the 4G windfall to be reinvested in science, engineering, technology and innovation.

4G technology is a clear example of the importance of sustained invest-ment in research. Marconi’s demon-stration of “wireless telegraphy” in 1896 was backed by our General Post

Office. James Clerk Maxwell, whose pioneering insights into electromag-netism underpin today’s wireless communications, made many of his breakthroughs in the UK’s university system. The government helped to fund Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the scientist who invented the worldwide web at CERN.

These technologies and others like them are essential to the UK’s future. Economists have shown that two-thirds of economic growth results from innovation. The world needs new technologies in order to meet the challenges of the 21st century, from climate change to food security. The UK needs a new generation of researchers, inventors, and entrepre-neurs to help to create an economy fit for the future, and the right infrastruc-ture to support them.

The windfall from the 3G spectrum was used to pay down the deficit. Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls has recently called for this new windfall to be used to build affordable homes and to offer a tax break to first-time

buyers. Both of these are laudable – but neither will give our economy the jump-start that it needs.

With its flat-cash settlement under attack from inflation, the UK faces stiff competition from countries that are increasing their investments in sci-ence. Sweden has recently unveiled plans to increase its science budget by 13%, China’s spending is up 13.4% this year compared to last year and even France plans to increase spending on higher education and research by 2.2% in 2013.

The proceeds of the auction are a return on past generations’ invest-ments in technology. The responsible way to use them is to reinvest them in technology.

We need your help. Please visit the 4Growth campaign website and sign the petition at www.its4growth.co.uk.

Imran Khan is the director of CaSE. The views expressed here are his own and those of CaSE, but the Institute of Physics is a member of CaSE and supports the 4G campaign.

Imran Khan argues that the windfall from selling the 4G spectrum should be spent on science.

“The proceeds of the 4G auction are a return on past generations’ investments in technology.”

Imran Khan.

Interactions December 2012