Light experiments to be demonstrated on international Day of Photonics

On 21 October 1983 the value of the speed of light 299 792 458 m/s was approved – and in honour of that event the day is celebrated as the International Day of Photonics. On that day the event will also be celebrated for the second time in Estonia: to everyone interested, the University of Tartu Institute of Physics will open its doors, show light experiments and introduce their recent achievements and developments in this field in Estonia.

According to one of the organisers of the day of photonics, representative of the photonics cluster of UT Institute of Physics, Sandhra-Mirelle Valdma, the European community has chosen photonics as one of the future-oriented key technologies and to raise awareness about it, events are organised all over the world on 21 October to introduce the importance and potential of this topic.

The photonics knowledge and skills of the students and researchers of UT Institute of Physics have been acknowledged in the world at several highly reputed competitions. So, on the day of photonics, this field of study is introduced in the context of these success stories. One success story, for example, features students who, for the international competition worked out a way how to forge the holographic security elements on an imaginary future banknote. For their solution they won the first prize in the category of photonics technologies, as the youngest team at the international “Open Research Challenge”.

Also the task and the solution will be presented, for which the doctoral students and researchers of the Institute of Physics recently defeated Harvard University and won an international competition in creating super-resolved microscopy software in the category of 3D microscopy.

The term “photonics” is derived from the word “photon”, which is the smallest possible particle of light. This term is used to denote both the industrial sector and the branch of science, which deal with technologies of light generation (e.g. LEDs, lasers), emission (e.g. lens, optical fibres) and absorption (e.g. solar panels, CCD detectors).

Day of Photonics is organised in Tartu by the Photonics Club of the UT Institute of Physics, Estonian Physics Society and Teadusbuss in collaboration with Estonian photonics companies and the Baltic Photonics Cluster and the events all over the world are coordinated by the European Photonics Industry Consortium. The event takes place on 21 October 2016 at 12 in the University of Tartu Institute of Physics. All those interested, incl. gymnasium students are welcome!

See event programme.

Additional information:

Ott Rebane, Industrial Relations Expert, University of Tartu Institute of Physics, 56 299 145, ott.rebane@ut.ee

Kaido Reivelt, Head of the Centre for School Physics, University of Tartu Institute of Physics, 737 4623, kaido.reivelt@ut.ee