Teaching workshops

Studying visible and invisible white light, playing with color filters, viewing spectrums on computer screens, reconstructing light—these are some of the ways to shed light on your understanding. 

Very quickly, you will reach the heart of the subject: how can light teach us about matter?  What are these “light-matter” interactions that are so useful to researchers?  You will discover the answers while lighting up samples with different light sources (fluorescence) or lighting up your hair or a ribbon with a laser (diffraction).  You will also interpose pieces of interlaced scotch tape between two optic elements called polarizers to discover another property of light (first approach to polarization).

What means does SOLEIL use to make electrons spin in its large ring, 354 meters in circumference?  How do I “visualize” the strength of a magnet?  What are Foucault currents and what do they do?  How can I make a small magnet “levitate”?  This workshop will help you understand the synchrotron “machine” and, in a general manner, magnetism and other associated phenomena.

Come vibrate with this new workshop on waves, created in October 2006 for the science festival: heat up a marshmallow in a microwave oven; analyze your breath with infrared light; study the behavior of waves in a vacuum, make a string vibrate, and finish with a little music on the theremine…

Other small experiments are available to you during our different exhibitions—for the youngest ones, for example.  We are also open to any new “schemes” we might conduct with you to talk about science together.