Herts • Wednesday 27 April 7.00 p.m. • Prof. Kerstin Dautenhahn
Applications of social robots
Robot companions have been used successfully in assistive technology, in general,
and robot-assisted therapy for children with autism, in particular. This talk will
introduce the fields of social robotics and human–robot interaction, which are very
interdisciplinary research areas.
July 2016
May 2016
London • Wednesday 4 May 6.30 p.m. • Prof. Derek Long
Information
Rise of the robots: progress in intelligent control
On land, in the seas, air and space, robotic systems are playing ever more important
roles. Developments in the field depend on two enterprises: the engineering of
complex systems and the programming of capable control systems that manage
increasing complexity. In this talk, Professor Long will present some of the progress
and remaining challenges in intelligent and purposeful control of these systems.
London (Burlington House) • Thursday 7 July • Various speakers
At home – recent and future developments in astronomy
There will be a series of talks throughout the day, including: exoplanets, the SKA,
big data, and what the Apollo samples continue to teach us, amongst others.
All our lectures are free to all and last about one hour. There are usually 10 to 15 minutes
afterwards for the audience to ask questions. School parties are welcome but please
register numbers beforehand with the relevant venue organiser (see below). All venues
are wheelchair accessible. The details herein are subject to possible alteration – please
check the LSE Branch webpage. Any views expressed are not necessarily those of the
Institute of Physics.
Follow us on:
Milton Keynes • Tuesday 10 May 7.30 p.m. • Prof. Jo Dunkley
Chasing cosmic inflation
For further details about this talk, please see the LSE Branch webpage london.iop.org.
Twitter: @IOPLSE
Facebook: facebook.com/ioplse
Website: london.iop.org
London • Wednesday 18 May 6.30 p.m. • Prof. Sanjeev Gupta
Mission to Mars
For further details about this talk, please see the LSE Branch webpage london.iop.org.
Lecture venue information and times are as follows:
Herts • Wednesday 25 May 7.00 p.m. • Prof. Lloyd Peck
Surviving Antarctic extremes
This talk investigates the physics of the problems faced by humans and other animals
in surviving in the coldest, driest, windiest places on Earth, and the solutions they have
to those problems.
June 2016
London • Wednesday 1 June 6.30 p.m. • Prof. Alan Davies
Feynman’s lost lecture
In March 1964, Richard Feynman gave a lecture entitled “The motion of the planets
around the Sun” as part of a series of lectures to freshmen at Caltech. For more
than three decades, the details of the lecture were thought to be lost, until it was
reconstructed from pictures found in recently discovered scraps of transcripts.
It is a story of Feynman’s genius and his unique ability to show physical concepts
in pictorial form.
Milton Keynes • Tuesday 14 June 7.30 p.m. • Dr C MacCormick
Ultra-cold atomic gases: how we explore physics, one atom at a time
Atomic physics was revitalized in the 1980s by the development of laser cooling
and trapping. Unprecedented control allows us to work with single atoms confined
in a magnetic or optical trap, or millions of atoms acting as one in a Bose–Einstein
condensate. Dr MacCormick describes how experiments pluck single atoms from a
cold atomic gas and then using finely tuned lasers, information is manipulated using
the strange rules of quantum mechanics. With luck, we will see some of the experiments as they happen via a lab-cast!
London
Lectures held at 6.30 p.m. in the Franklin Room, Institute of Physics, 80 Portland Place,
London W1B 1NT. Refreshments are served from 6.00 p.m. on the day of the lecture.
Please register online to attend lectures. E-mail londonsoutheast@physics.org or
call 020 7470 4938 for further info.
Berkshire
Lectures held at 7.30 p.m. in the William Penny Theatre, Recreational Society, West
Gate, AWE, Aldermaston, Reading RG7 4PR. The theatre entrance is on the A340
Basingstoke to Newbury road, just before the Heath End roundabout at Tadley. Do not
use the main gate entrance; the correct gate is signposted as the West Gate or AWE Staff
+ Deliveries (picture of a lorry). E-mail iop.lectures@awe.co.uk for further info.
Herts
Lectures held in the Lindop Building, University of Herts, College Lane, Hatfield
AL10 9AB. For further information on this season’s events, contact Diane Crann
(e-mail d.crann@herts.ac.uk, tel 07770 444614).
Kent
Unless stated otherwise, lectures held at 7.30 p.m. in Grimond Lecture Theatre 3,
University of Kent, Canterbury CT2 7NZ. For further information contact Dr Cyril Isenberg
(e-mail c.isenberg@kent.ac.uk, tel 01227 823768).
Milton Keynes
Lectures held at 7.30 p.m. in the Berrill Lecture Theatre, Open Uni, Walton Hall,
Milton Keynes MK7 6AA. No need to register. For further information contact
Prof. Ray Mackintosh (raymond.mackintosh@open.ac.uk).
London & South East Branch
Public Events – Spring 2016
London and South East Lecture Programme
January 2016
London • Thursday 7 January 10.00 a.m. • Sir Arnold Wolfendale and others
At home – a miscellany
A series of talks on a wide range of physics topics from navigation and timekeeping
to medical ultrasound. For further details, please see the LSE Branch webpage
london.iop.org.
London • Wednesday 20 January 6.30 p.m. • Martin Kellett
Is it safe?
Flying is the safest form of transport on the planet. Martin Kellett explores just how the
extraordinary safety record is achieved. Martin was a lecturer at Cranfield University
but now runs a small consultancy offering flight testing and airworthiness services to
the aerospace industry.
Herts • Wednesday 27 January 7.00 p.m. • Martin Kellett
Is it safe?
See London Wednesday 20 January.
February 2016
London • Wednesday 3 February 6.30 p.m. • Prof. Timothy Leighton
The acoustic bubble: from whales to other worlds
Gas bubbles in liquids have an extraordinary ability to interact with sound fields.
Bubbles generate the ocean sounds that help us understand the global carbon budget,
and aid our design of probes to understand other worlds. Prof Leighton will explain how
throughout industry and medicine, sound is used to activate bubbles and generate a
range of useful effects.
Kent • Tuesday 9 February 7.30 p.m. • Prof. Andrew Stockman
Human colour vision
We perceive a seemingly enormous variety of hues, yet
the first stage of human colour vision is relatively simple.
Phototransduction within the three types of cone photoreceptor
means that colour matches are defined by just three numbers.
Yet, despite the underlying simplicity of the underlying cone
signals, the colours we perceive depend on many other factors, including individual
differences, the influence of surrounding colours and cognitive factors.
Milton Keynes • Tuesday 9 February 7.30 p.m. • Prof. E Highwood
Global warming and climate change – what’s the difference?
Global warming is a term used widely in the media as “short hand” for climate change.
Sometimes this can lead to misunderstandings as regional changes can be somewhat
different. In this talk I will present the science behind climate change going beyond
“global warming” to discuss what we know and don’t know about the complex ways in
which our climate system has changed, and what we can learn from projections into
the future. I will include water-cycle changes and the links between climate change
and air pollution.
London • Wednesday 17 February 6.30 p.m. • Dr Claire Murray
Atoms, patterns and powders at Diamond Light Source
Diamond Light Source in Oxfordshire is the UK’s national
synchrotron science facility. It speeds up electrons to near light
speeds, producing a beam 10 billion times brighter than the Sun.
Scientists use this light to study a range of materials from viruses
to jet engines. On beamline I11 this light is used for diffraction
experiments. But what is diffraction? And what does it tell us? Dr Murray explains all.
Herts • Wednesday 24 February 7.00 p.m. • S Leigh
For further details about this talk please see the LSE Branch webpage london.iop.org.
March 2016
Kent • Tuesday 1 March 7.30 p.m. • Dr Stephen Lowry
Imaging comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko from Rosetta
The European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft has been studying comet 67P/
Churyumov–Gerasimenko for over a year. The images sent back from the OSIRIS
optical camera instrument on board have revealed a striking and bizarre world. Dr
Lowry will summarize the latest findings from the mission, with emphasis on the
imaging data from OSIRIS, and what we still hope to learn as the probe continues to
escort the comet around the Sun.
London • Wednesday 2 March 6.30 p.m. • Dr Melanie Windridge
Aurora: in search of the Northern Lights
Do we really understand the science behind the aurora? Speaking about her new book,
and describing a journey that takes her through Scandinavia, Canada and Svalbard
– culminating in a spectacular solar eclipse – Dr Melanie Windridge delves into the
Northern Lights.
Milton Keynes • Tuesday 8 March 7.30 p.m. • Dr David Wallace
The world(s) according to quantum mechanics
Quantum theory, by most standards one of the shining successes of 20th-century
physics, is notoriously difficult to make sense of – and taking it literally as a description
of the Universe seems to lead to the science-fictional idea that the world around us is
just one of a great many parallel worlds. I will explain why this crazy-sounding result
might nonetheless be a natural way of making sense of modern physics.
Kent • Tuesday 15 March 7.30 p.m. • Prof. David Berman
One hundred years of general relativity
In 1915 Einstein produced his master work: general relativity. Based on the bending of
space–time itself, his theory is perhaps the most impressive discovery in the history
of theoretical physics. This talk describes the ideas behind relativity and shows how
Einstein’s legacy lives on.
All free, all welcome! Please join our Facebook group facebook.com/ioplse
London • Wednesday 16 March 6.30 p.m. • Prof. Carolyn Roberts
Scientific research – it’s murder!
Scientific research can assist the police in identifying the pathways followed by murder
victims as they sink into, or float along in, rivers and canals. Drawing upon some of
the macabre examples on which she has worked, Prof Roberts will talk about these
inquiries, explain how she first started undertaking this type of consultancy work, and
reflect on the challenges of applying hydrological principles to floating bodies. While
the detail may be unnerving, the science should intrigue the curious.
Herts • Wednesday 23 March 7.00 p.m. • Dr James Geach
The formation and evolution of galaxies: a 14 billion year story
Dr Geach will discuss how the hundreds of billions of galaxies – of which our own Milky
Way is but one – came to be.
Kent • Tuesday 29 March 7.30 p.m. • Prof. John Batchelor
The Internet of things: how to make ordinary things into wireless centres
For further details about this talk please see the LSE Branch webpage london.iop.org.
April 2016
Kent • Tuesday 5 April 7.30 p.m. • DVD
The life and work of Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin (1910–1994)
Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin was born in Cairo but spent most of her life in England.
An undergraduate chemist at Oxford, and a postgraduate crystallography student
at Cambridge, she concerned herself with the structure of proteins using X-ray
crystallography. Having determined the structure of the steroid cholesteryl iodide
and penicillin, as well as the structure of vitamin B12, she received the Nobel Prize in
Chemistry in 1964. However, in 1969 she made her most impressive discovery: the
structure of insulin.
London • Wednesday 6 April 6.30 p.m. • José Pizarro De La Iglesia
Galileo for dummies
José Pizarro De La Iglesia will introduce Europe’s Global Navigation System. In
particular, he will present the Galileo Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)
and its services.
Milton Keynes • Wednesday 13 April 7.30 p.m. • Anthony T Barker
Magnetic stimulation of the brain: reaching the parts other
stimulators cannot reach!
Nerves carry signals around the body and can be electrically
stimulated for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. However,
the brain is difficult to stimulate non-invasively because of the
high electrical resistance of the skull. Magnetic stimulation uses
large pulses of magnetic field to induce currents in the brain without them having to
pass through the skull. A UK invention, the technique is now widely used throughout
the world. Tony Barker will describe the history of the technique, the physics principles
on which it is based and some of its clinical applications, along with a practical
demonstration.