Physics School Talk update

Have a picture show in the physics school talk.  Show pictures of people. Three types.  Famous physicists.  You know, Einstein, Curie, Dirac, Feynman, Bell Burnell, etc etc.  Famous people who did physics degrees. Merkel, Musk, Kim Jong Un, UWA Chancellor etc etc.  And a third group we'll come to.

But how about the pictures?  Take pictures when they are young.  Preferably aged 16 or so.  Jazz them up a bit - use Snapchat filters etc.

And that third group?  Well if you are doing a school talk, ask the school if you can use some images of their own students, preferably the ones in the talk.  They usually have some images which students have agreed can be used in publicity.  And intersperse the famous with the students.  Sow the seed in their mind that they can be up there.  Make them laugh.  Get them excited - engage them.

I don't know if I mentioned it and I don't know if its relevant to all disciplines, but one thing struck me about physics. I went to school. I played hockey at school and university. I trained for swimming intensively for a few years. I joined a surf club and rowed in a surfboat crew. And it wasn't really until I was doing third year physics at uni when it started to hit me - these were my people. Everywhere else, I was an outsider. And a couple of years later when I did Honours I remember sitting around with the class after going out to play squash (no idea why squash!) it really hit me that for what seemed like the first time in my life I really felt at home with these people.

Now you may already feel like that.  Or you may never feel like that.  But there is something just a bit magical about getting together with the people who love the same thing that you do.