Laurence Wroe wins funding to develop a workshop for school students that combines physics and music

Congratulations to our Stipendiary Lecturer in Physics Laurence Wroe (2014, MPhys Physics) who recently won funding from the Public Engagement with Research Seed Fund (PER) to develop a 'Funky-Shaped Drums and Particle Accelerators' workshop for 11-14 year old school students. PER is part of the University of Oxford's small grants scheme that provides funds for researchers to develop, deliver and evaluate Public Engagement with Research projects and activities. Laurence described his project for us:

“Particle accelerators are machines that are used to drive atomic and sub-atomic particles to very high energies. The most famous particle accelerator, the 27 km circumference Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, is the biggest science experiment on Earth and is used to investigate and advance our understanding of how our universe works. It may surprise you to know, however, that there are actually over 50,000 particle accelerators worldwide as they have very useful applications in medicine, industry, security, imaging and more.

You may be hard-pressed to find a link between drums and particle accelerators. Some of the underlying physics of these seemingly disparate instruments, however, is identical: my accelerator physics research to design a component that is able to both accelerate and control a beam of particles simultaneously in a particle accelerator is analogous to asking “if we build a drum that isn’t circular but instead more funky-shaped, what will it sound like?”

I was recently awarded funding from the Public Engagement with Research Seed Fund to develop a 'Funky-Shaped Drums and Particle Accelerators' workshop for 11-14 year-old school children. As part of the workshop, students will play, investigate, and undertake experiments with bespoke funky-shaped drums and Chladni plates to investigate the link between music, drums and particle accelerators and help us with our cutting-edge physics research!

Beyond exploring this exciting link, our project aims to broaden student’s knowledge of what actually counts as science, build their science capital, and encourage an uptake in post-16 STEM study.

Please follow us on our Instagram where we will document the progress of this exciting project: @funky_drums.”