A girl in a physics world. : Seeing Jim Al-Khalili at the Royal Society!

On the 27th of January I attended a lecture given by the one and only Jim Al-Khalili OBE - author, broadcaster and theoretical physicist - at the Royal Society! I'd seen a few of his documentaries in one of my A level physics classes and then watched a few more after that where the most recent one I watched was his series called The Secrets of Quantum Physics on BBC FOUR, which I thought was great! So, Jim is a (physics) TV celebrity! Seeing him at the Royal Society, therefore, was an opportunity I could not miss! Find out more about Jim here and here.

Jim's lecture carried on the theme of the International Year of Light (IYL 2015). IYL was proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in 2013 and since then, 2015 has been filled with events promoting the role of light in the modern world! The first studies of optics were done 1000 years ago and so it was only right to finally celebrate light!!

After a morning at uni doing work on the Pop-O-Matic - check out previous blog posts for more details - I made my way to the Royal Society. I arrived there to see my old Physics teacher and his group of A level students! It was lovely to see some students I had given a talk to a few months ago and the fact that their teacher was taking their students outside of the classroom and broadening their science knowledge!

We walked through the grand entrance of the Royal Society where we were met by a beautifully lit Royal Society, which I'm sure was done in celebration of the International Year of Light. We walked into the lecture venue to find lots and lots of people waiting for Al-Khalili to spread some love for light. We took our seats and the excitement was unbearable - I couldn't believe I was going to see Jim Al-Khalili, the person on TV spreading love for physics! He was introduced to the stage and as soon as he walked up onto the stage I was literally thinking OMG! Am I really seeing Jim right now?! Totally wanted to fangirl! ;)

He began his talk titled, A brief history of light: What the medieval world knew about optics, where he began to introduce the audience to the basics of light, what it is and how we use it in our modern lives. He then began the story of medieval optics, which began with the 'Golden Age of Arabic Science' where the language of science was Arabic. His talk focussed on the work of Ibn Al-Haytham, the 'father of modern optics'. Ibn Al-Haytham made great contributions to the understanding of vision, optics and light. His greatest achievement/work was done during a period of his life where he was under house arrest! After telling the Fatimid caliph in Egypt that he could provide a solution that would regulate the Nile flooding and then later, after he had second thoughts he realised this could not be possible without the best builders. Instead, to avoid the caliph's wrath and possible execution, he faked madness. As a result, he escaped executed and was put under house arrest. It is reported that light shined into his dark room from a tiny pinhole which projected an image of the outside scenery into his room! Essentially the first pin hole camera! After repeat measurements he concluded that light travelled in straight lines and that vision comes about through light from a light source being reflected off objects and entering our eyes. It was a very cool story and in some ways inspirational too! I had never heard of Ibn Al-Haytham before so it was nice to travel back in time and see medieval science in action through pictures shown on Jim's slides.

Check out a similar talk here (Royal Society, Michael Faraday Prize Lecture). And learn more about Ibn Al-Haythan here.

Jim's talk was topped off with a SPECTACULAR LASER LIGHT SHOW! It was honeslty the coolest laser light shows I've ever seen - the London Eye in red was in the background, smoke filled the London air in order to show off the pretty colours of the lasers. The lasers also illuminated a local monument which was sweet! #Awesomeness (see video below)

Check out the pictures and videos from the day below: