By Hamish Johnston
Congratulations to our colleagues at the Institute of Physics (IOP), who have won a British Universities Film and Video Council Learning on Screen Award for the second year running.
Called Physics Lives, the IOP’s film series focused on four university research physicists – David Tong from the University of Cambridge, Jim Wild from Lancaster University, Melanie Bailey from the University of Surrey and Mark Richards from Imperial College London. The films were directed by Kevin Hull (above right) and funded by a grant from the Higher Education Funding Council for England.
One highlight of the series is Tong lying motionless in the bath and then blowing bubble rings. “Baths would be so much more relaxing if they weren’t so interesting,” he says. The video continues with some lovely shots of water vortices, smoke rings and colliding marbles, all explained in a soothing dreamlike manner by Tong. Then the film moves on to Tong’s research on quarks, and he explains why solitons could hold the key to understanding the strong force, which binds together quarks in hadrons such as protons and neutrons.
You can watch all of the films here.
