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Brought to Light: The Past and Future of Earth's Greatest Resource

Michael Wharmby

• 25 September 2015
  5pm - 8.30pm

• King's Manor, Huntingdon Room (map)

• FREE admission
  No booking required

• Wheelchair accessible

Event details

Light has fascinated scientists for hundreds of years. For centuries its origins and nature were mysterious. So just what is light? And how do scientists use light today to study the atomic structure of matter? In this journey through time, Dr Michael Wharmby of Diamond Light Source, the UK’s national synchrotron science facility, will tell the story of light, explaining how its weird properties are crucial to modern science and technology. We’ll learn how and why large scale scientific facilities are so keen to generate light billions of times brighter than the sun and explore the ways in which light is being used to study everything from vaccines to comets and renewable energy. Afterwards, see for yourself how some of the strange properties of light are used by scientists, with hands-on experiments: try splitting light into its constituent colours; make your own crystal; and solve a structure, using Diamond’s Lego Beamline!