On November 5, 2022, the Laboratory for Neutron and Muon Instrumentation in collaboration with the Correlated Quantum Matter group at the University of Zurich carried out the workshop “Wellenspiele” (German for “Playing with Waves”) for the Kinderuniversität Zürich (“Children’s University Zurich”) for the first time.
For the workshop more than 20 future scientists visited the PSI iLab (many thanks to Beat Henrich) where they generated various waves (using gummi bears and springs!) and measured their properties (using water waves and a laser). They learned how waves can travel around objects while picking up information about the objects size. This is exactly what allows scientists at the PSI to look deep inside materials to learn about their atomic-scale structure using X-Ray and neutron waves. During the workshop we used this to understand why diamond is hard and graphite is soft, even though both are built from carbon atoms. Finally, the kids build atomic-scale models of graphite and diamond, which this next generation of scientists was allowed to take home for further exploration.