Tag archives: International Year of Light
New York dims its lights for birds
By James Dacey
It’s been a great week for birds – or at least those flying over the state of New York – after state governor Andrew Cuomo pledged to create safer migration routes for our feathered friends. All state buildings will now have to comply with a national US initiative that seeks to curb levels of light pollution, which can disorient birds and lead to huge numbers of avian deaths by “fatal light attraction”.
Many species of bird rely on the light from star constellations to help them navigate during spring and autumn migrations. Unfortunately, artificial light sources can throw the animals off course, and light reflected from glass can cause the birds to smack into windows, walls, floodlights and other hard surfaces. It is estimated that as many as a billion birds succumb to this cruel end each year in the US alone, according to the US Department of Agriculture.
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IYL 2015 gets Swiss design makeover
By James Dacey
One of the big aims of the International Year of Light (IYL 2015) is to take scientific ideas out of the lab to show the world just how inspiring and useful they can be. In the process, it can forge relationships between different communities, including scientists, engineers, artists, journalists, architects, politicians, aid workers…the list goes on.
Here in Bristol, where Physics World is produced, we’ve seen a fantastic local example of this by way of an art project at the University of the West of England (UWE). Second-year graphic-design students were set the brief of creating posters themed on IYL 2015. Last night we hosted an evening at IOP Publishing headquarters to showcase the students’ work and to let them find out more about science publishing.
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Celebrating a year of light
By Michael Banks in San Antonio, Texas
With 2015 being the International Year of Light it is perhaps the perfect opportunity to have a session at this year’s American Physical Society meeting in San Antonio dedicated to the forefront of optics research.
Yesterday afternoon saw a number of light pioneers update delegates about their research. The session boasted three of last year’s Nobel-prize winners: Stefan Hell of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Gottingen, Germany; William Moerner of Stanford University; and Shuji Nakamura of the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Your secret superpower
By Matin Durrani
The March 2015 issue of Physics World magazine, a special issue about light in our lives that is now out in print, online and via our apps, contains a fascinating feature about an astonishing – and largely unknown – superpower that you perhaps don’t realize you have. It might sound bizarre, but using your naked eyes – and with no additional gadgets whatsoever – you can detect whether or not light is “polarized”. And in the video above, Louise Mayor, features editor of Physics World, tells you how.
Lighting up a mid-winter Bath
By James Dacey
In what could be described as the West Country’s answer to Diwali, the city of Bath in the UK has just hosted an eight-day festival of light, featuring colourful public artworks based on lighting technologies. “Illuminate 2015” was one of the first events on the calendar in this International Year of Light, the UNESCO-supported celebration of light science and its applications. I popped along to the event last Thursday to find out what it was all about and I’ve put together this short film, which includes the event’s creative director Anthony Head explaining what the festival is all about.
“It’s a subtle introduction to experimenting with science,” says Head, referring to the fact that many of the exhibits are interactive and involve some playful experimentation. One such exhibit, called “Light Painting”, invited the general public to create images that were then projected onto some of the local buildings. Another exhibit, called “Sonic: Sullis”, enabled people to create sounds and light projections by simply disturbing water contained in a box.
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