Today I attended the Welcome Orientation for Women in Physics and AstronomyDepartment http://www.phas.ubc.ca/wow/. It is an orientation aimed at students who are in Highschool or University and are interested in Physics. Although (like many events that I have gone to around campus) turnout was fairly small, it was an awesome way to learn more about the Physics department and what it is like to be a physicist.
One of the highlights of the day was the first workshop which was a hands on, learn how to make a robot workshop!!! It was so cool! We were provided with instructions and a little kit with all the components and worked in pairs to make them. I have NEVER made a robot before, so I was quite anxious going into the lab, but it was so much fun! It was tedious poking the right wires into the right position of the bread board and my partner and I had numerous issues trying to bend paper clips without breaking them. As I looked around I realized a couple of the other groups were way further ahead than we were, being a little bit competitive this bugged me a little. But ours managed to be the first one up and running! First try too! I guess sometimes being a bit of a perfectionist pays off. =P Here is a video of our cute little robot! It is adorable, and insanely cool.
The orientation had a lot of guest speakers from the various physics departments who explained their work and how they got into physics. I found that really interesting, but the most interesting part was seeing the labs. I would have gone on all of the lab tours if I could have! I could go look at labs everyday! Anyways the two labs that I visited were Dr. Jeff Young’s http://www.physics.ubc.ca/~nanolab/ and Dr. Sarah Burke’s http://www.phas.ubc.ca/~saburke/ who both work with nanostructures (really, really tiny things). I really liked both of the labs, it is always surprising what is tucked away inside the building at UBC. I mean if you are living in residence you are living so close to some really amazing machines (which I imagine are quite expensive too)!!! I really liked how we could ask the researchers questions, and I liked seeing the inside of the labs. =)
If you are a girl and thinking about going into Physics, or would like to know more about what sort of things the physics department does, I would definitely recommend going to the orientation as it was very informative and inspiring.