outreach | ARC Centre of Excellence in Future Low-Energy Electronics Technologies

Women in Physics Public Lecture. What do theoretical physicists do?

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8 May 2024
7:00 pm - 8:30 pm

The AIP is delighted to announce that FLEET’s Professor Susan Coppersmith FAA FAIP, a theoretical physicist at UNSW Sydney, will tour Australia this year as the AIP’s 2024 Women in Physics Lecturer. Susan with present a public lecture in Melbourne as part of her tour See details online Venue: RMIT City Campus, Building 80, Level 2, Room Read More

FLEET outreach impact

Over the years, FLEET has conducted a variety of outreach events with schools and the general public. Most of the events were evaluated using recognized pre- and post-evaluation methods to understand the impact of the event relative to our strategic goals. The methods are outlined in the reports below. This page contains the reports for all evaluated events from 2021 ...

The National Science Quiz returns for 2023

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27 Aug 2023
3:30 pm - 4:30 pm

More than trivia. The National Science Quiz is a celebration of science and aims to engage people with science and inspire the next generation of Australia’s leading scientists. Join host Charlie Pickering from ABC TV’s The Weekly, special guest team captains (meteorologist/ABC weather presenter Nate Byrne and Numeracy ambassador/ mathematician/host of Numberphile Simon Pampena) and Read More

Forces and energy: Electricity and sustainable energy

Electrical energy Electrical energy also has many forms. For example, lightning, is a form of static electricity. You witness static electricity also when you rub a balloon against your hair. One of the most useful forms of electrical energy for humans is when it is generated from a current, which occurs when electrons flow through a circuit. It is the ...

Forces and energy: Kinetic, potential, conservation and transformation

Forms of energy The two broad forms of energy are potential and kinetic and each have different types, which we outline in more detail below. Others energy forms include sound and thermal energy. We will focus on potential and kinetic here. Light could also be considered a form of energy, but it gets interesting because is has both particle and ...

Forces and Energy: Energy and Work

What do we mean by energy? Energy is the capacity of a physical system to do work or cause a change. We will examine what this means in detail below, but to help establish students’ baseline understanding of energy get students to do Activity 1. What is energy? Why is understanding energy important? When we design and build stuff important ...

The National Science Quiz. More than trivia

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7 Aug 2022
7:30 pm - 9:00 pm

Join us for a fantastic night of science and fun with The National Science Quiz! Hosted by Charlie Pickering from ABC-TV’s The Weekly Join us live in Melbourne or online on Sunday 7 August. Two teams of scientists with special guest team captains, comedian Lawrence Leung & ABC weather presenter/science communicator Nate Byrne, will battle Read More

National Science Quiz

More details about the 2021 National Science Quiz (NSQ) – the host, panelists, questions and how the quiz and streaming worked – can be found on the National Science Quiz website Background to the quiz The NSQ is inspired by ‘De Nationale Wetenschapsquiz’ (NWQ) which was televised nationally in the Netherlands for 25 years. In a made-for-TV format, it pondered ...

International Women’s Day bias breaker: Meera Parish

Meera Parish is a FLEET Chief Investigator and a full Professor in the Monash University School of Physics and Astronomy. Meera is a theoretical physicist investigating and mathematically describing the behaviour of large groups of interacting quantum particles, such as atoms or electrons that can exhibit exotic behaviour, such as superfluidity where they flow without encountering resistance. Meera’s experience with ...

International Women’s Day bias breaker: Golrokh Akhgar

Golrokh Akhgar is a Scientific Associate Investigator with FLEET and based at Monash University. She studies the magnetic properties of materials to work out they can store energy more efficiently. Golrokh explains that she was always fascinated with mathematics growing up. “I chose this field because I enjoy solving problems and finding solutions using numbers.” Golrokh too has witnessed bias ...

International Women’s Day bias breaker: Peggy Schoenherr

Peggy Schoenherr is a FLEET Postdoctoral Fellow based at the School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales, where she studies the magnetic, electric and mechanical properties of materials at the nanoscale and how they could be used to develop efficient and low-energy electronics. Peggy found attitudes towards young girls excelling at science were very different to ...

International Women’s Day bias breaker: Patjaree Aukarasereenont

Patjaree Aukarasereenont is a FLEET PhD student at our RMIT node. Her research investigates the synthesis of novel 2D materials (materials just one to a few atoms thick) to develop low-energy logic devices used in computer chips. The RMIT research team that Patjaree is a part of strives to provide material solutions to big societal challenges such as energy, pollution ...

International Women’s Day bias breaker: Maedehsadat Mousavi

Maedehsadat (Maede) Mousavi is a FLEET PhD student in chemical engineering and material science at the University of New South Wales. Her research investigates the synthesis and application of liquid metals and topological insulators, which are a new class of materials that are insulators on their interior, but will conduct electrical current on their edges without the loss of energy. ...

International Women’s Day: FLEET women blazing their own trail

FLEET is celebrating International Women’s Day, by profiling FLEET women at different stages of their research career. These women are forging a career path in physics, chemistry and engineering and making a strong point that there is a place in this space for women and diversity. FLEET’s Equity and Diversity Committee Chair, Prof Jeff Davis says, “FLEET has a strategic ...

Ice Ice Baby, Let it snow, let it snow….What is it?

Making snowflakes, the science of ice and freezing, and festive-like experiments that you can try at home. OK, we don’t normally get snow in Australia at Christmas, but we do like to put ice in our drinks on the hot Summer days, so why not talk about the snow and ice. Afterall, Winter is coming… But here’s the thing, we ...

Ask the Physicists: Swimming in a lightning storm

It is a dark and stormy…day. Thunderbolts and lightning, very, very frightening. Mama Mia. And you are out swimming. OMG! Got to get out of the water and dash for the car. You are dripping wet as you dash to the car – lightning strikes the Earth everywhere. As you dash to the car, are you in greater danger from ...

Making metal stuff fly, levitation and the potential of superconductors

What follows is in answer to a question about whether we could make metal object fly without any help from engine-like things. If you live on Earth or anywhere that gravity exists, and you have mass (that is, you are made up of atoms and have weight), then gravity will always want to pull you toward the Earth. Actually, anything ...

What is an atom? Like us, mostly empty space it seems…

I have found two things the younger students struggle to conceptualize about an atom: Students perceive that an atom is an atom – they are all one in the same; and they struggle to conceptualize the massive amount of space between the nucleus and electrons. I offer some ways to help students visualize/conceptualize the atom more accurately The basics Atoms ...

FLEET Schools

FLEET Schools is a resource for primary and secondary teachers and students to engage with physics and chemistry, and to learn and think about the research problems FLEET is working on. That problem is our ever increasing energy requirements coming from our for rapidly increasing computation demand. Think Internet of Things, AI, driverless cars, smart phones and gaming. To solve ...

FLEET schools: Conductors, insulators and electricity

Introduction From the dawn of time we have witnessed electricity as a primal force of nature in the form of lightning. The ancient Greeks would rub amber with a cloth and get small electric shocks – the same static electricity we experience when we rub our feet along the carpet and then touch something conductive, for example a metal bench ...

Shapes and Patterns & the next big thing in physics: moiré pattern and twistronics

What can you do with simple shapes? Create a type of animation that will surprise you. It is cool quantum art, yet our understanding of moiré patterns is behind the development of novel materials to enable quantum computing, and to develop energy-efficient digital technologies, data storage and information and electricity transmission. It all comes down to magic angles and what ...

Balloon Rocket

Make a rocket with just a balloon, string, straws and sticky tape. See how far and how high you can go. Learning intentions Students examine and apply Newton’s law of motion (action and reaction). For older and more advanced students they will learn about Newton’s 2nd law and the relationship between force, mass and acceleration: F=m/a. See experiment 2. Download ...