Today, let us welcome another S3 alumnus to the Presenting Alumni stage – Felix Lahr, now a new biochemistry student at the University of Heidelberg. Despite having just finished high school, Felix is already shaping up to be an incredibly accomplished and inspired scientist. Join us for an overview of his endeavors so far and his experience as a participant at S3 2019.
Author: Laura Busak
Laura is a physics student with a love for all things cosmic. She enjoys making and listening to music, reading books that make her think, and generally doing whatever random things she thinks of, often until 2 am.
Co-author: Mario Zelić
“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”
Marie Curie
Radiation is a word that incites fear in a lot of people. Much of that fear originates from a misunderstanding of what it actually is, what it does and what it does not. “Radiation” is a very broad term, generally used to represent any emission of energy by a source of some kind. However, there are many different phenomena that fall under that umbrella, and they come in varying degrees of rarity and of danger. Even those that may be seen as “dangerous” in some respects can be more useful than harmful – which is why medicine has both treatments for those who suffered too much damaging radiation, and treatments utilizing the purposeful irradiation of a patient.
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How we know what we know
If you have ever sat in a science class, you might be familiar with the classic science-teacher opening to an introductory lesson on a new topic. Quite typically, you are not given an immediate outline of the new concepts, but rather briefed on how and why we came to know them in the first place. If you are to study the classical law of universal gravitation, you first need to know the story of how an apple supposedly decided to study the crown of Isaac Newton’s head. You might think this is somewhat silly. Why turn a physics lecture into a history class? Well, there is a reason for this trend, and it is not to fill time.
Today, it is my pleasure to present another Presenting Alumni interview, this time with Srinath Krishnamurthy. Srinath was a project leader at the Summer School of Science in 2018, where he held a biochemistry project alongside his wife Sindhuja. He is in his final year as a postdoc in biophysics, working with membrane protein complexes.
It is time to talk to another immensely interesting alumna of ours – this time, Iwona Kotlarska. Iwona participated at S3++ in 2017 and is currently studying towards a master’s degree in computer science, as well as a bachelor’s in mathematics. So, Iwona, why don’t you give us a short introduction for a start?
Can you believe it? It’s been a year since we first greeted you on this blog, and what a year it’s been. We started this blog as a way to connect with our amazing alumni community, but also to reach out to the world and show it what we’ve got, trying to survive 2020. And survive, we did, with your help! Today, we’d like to take a quick look back on this past year and what we’ve built – together.
Co-author: Mario Zelić
Dearly beloved, we have gathered here today to join together the Summer School of Science and the Internet in matrimony. Due to current circumstances, which make it impossible to organize S3 in Požega like we used to, this year we are in dire need of evolution and adaptation. The School is coming back, but in a different format. In this post, we bring you a detailed description of how we envisioned this year’s Summer School (and what you need to do if you’d like to join).
Now, now. Lay down the pitchforks. The title of this post might seem all the more blasphemous to some of you due to its date of publication, but it allows us to introduce a very important topic – the power of approximation, and when it should and should not be employed.
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Roger Penrose
Sir Roger Penrose is one of those names in science you may see so often that you might just think it’s an adjective, especially if your interests happen to be particularly well aligned with his. Penrose’s name crops up in cosmology, quantum mechanics, various mathematical fields and even in philosophy and graphic art. He is also one of this year’s Nobel Prize laureates in physics, which is why his name has been showing up even more frequently than usual. Since his is a name and character worth remembering, we’re bringing you a short overview of his most important endeavors and contributions.
The principle of science, the definition, almost, is the following: the test of all knowledge is experiment. Experiment is the sole judge of scientific truth.
Richard Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics
