Outreach

 
The focus of our outreach initiatives is to explain and highlight the importance of liquid crystals and related optical materials, which is not only a fascinating area of research, but is also at the core of one of the most successful technologies for consumer products.
Better understanding of the basic technologies that surround us on a daily basis stimulates further interest and help to develop new ideas. This attitude and curiosity driven exploration is particularly important for school age children and teenagers, to stimulate their interest and encourage them to pursue science related subjects. Demonstrating the success stories from research and engineering also highlights the range of exciting professional careers that are available both in academia and in industry.

Our group, together with colleagues from the Universities of Manchester, York and Sheffield Hallam developed a presentation with hands-on activities for the Big Bang Science Festival in London. We also took part in one of the  Royal Society Summer Science Exhibitions.  We prepared an overview presentation on the topic of liquid crystals, “Liquid Crystals: living cells and flat screen TVs”. It was aimed at the general public, from school kids to adults, to demonstrate the latest developments in liquid crystal research and to engage the visitors in discussions about related technologies.  Selected and informative hands-on experiments explained the basics aspects of liquid crystal properties, such as birefringence, phase transitions, thermochromism, as well as the principle of flat screen TVs operation. The magic of selectively reflecting beetles and the strength of Kevlar fibres and fabric, which is used in a bullet-proof jacket, proved particularly popular.
"Liquid Crystals: living cells and flat screen TVs" is our overview presentation on the topic of liquid crystals. It is aimed at the general public, from school kids to adults, to demonstrate the latest developments in the liquid crystal research and to engage the visitors in discussions about the related technologies.  Selected and informative hands-on experiments explain the basics aspects of liquid crystal properties, such as birefringence, phase transitions, thermochromism, as well as the principle of flat screen TVs operation. The magic of selectively reflecting beetles and the strength of Kevlar fibres and fabric, which is used in a bullet-proof jacket, has proved particularly popular.

Novel devices, at the cutting edge liquid crystal technology were also available to view. This included, for example, 3D laptops that work without any glasses; dual vision SatNav systems, where a driver is guided by a map, while a passenger can simultaneously watch a movie on the same screen (both provided by Sharp Laboratories of Europe).