Visit the biggest popular science fair in the Czech Republic. The event has been organized annually by the Czech Academy of Sciences since 2015. It introduces science in all its forms and offers its visitors the most interesting aspects from the world of natural, technical, human and social sciences. It presents science and research as a fascinating and essential branch of human activities. Visitors get the first-hand experience of science by means of interactive exhibits, models, mobile laboratories and practical workshops. The Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences has been the largest exhibitor in the last few years!
More and more visitors and popularizers come every year – in 2019 a record of 30 150 people was reached. The Science Fair has thus significantly grown in the last few years and have become one of the fastest-growing and the most progressive fairs in the Czech Republic.
Every year the Institute of Physics presents a wide range of research projects in an attractive form. In 2019, the biggest part of the exhibition consisting of 15 interactive sites was devoted to light, its use and to other eco-friendly technologies which our institute helps to improve. There were exhibits representing the most powerful lasers located in ELI and HiLASE centres in Dolní Břežany or an infinity mirror. Visitors could see the composition of light from different sources using diffraction glasses and most of them did not hesitate to make their own hand-held spectroscopes for the same purpose. And it were also mainly children who appreciated the possibility to make a bracelet for UV radiation detection and trains, cockroaches and spiders powered by light. In the meantime, adults could, for example, find out how FZU works on the development of modern solar panels and economical LED diodes and bulbs. Dr Antonín Fejfar from the FZU gave a lecture titled The Beginning of the Solar Age.
For 2020, we have chosen the 60th anniversary since the launch of the first laser as the central theme of the FZU exposition. It will be a great opportunity to present ELI and HiLASE laser centres and their contribution to fundamental physics and industrial applications to the public. And not only this. Visitors will also find out where we can meet lasers in our everyday lives or what common objects are manufactured using lasers nowadays. We also have exhibits for small children which will demonstrate how laser light originates and how it differs from normal light. Fans of other fields of physics will naturally not be ripped off. It is now a tradition that we present expert groups for cosmology and particle physics or research using different types of microscopes.
Up-to-date information and ways to register for certain parts of the programme are available at the website of the fair.
What the last year’s Science Fair was like can be found here.