20 July, 2015 – Light and Color for the International Year of Light IYL2015. This is the theme chosen for the second edition of the China Science Festival and Youth Science Education Expo 2015, held in Beijing. This year, Italy is the guest of honor, involving the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN). At the event, which opened last Friday and will continue until August 2 at the Beijing Exhibition Center, sees also the participation of the National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF), the National Research Council and the Science Festival of Genoa. The Festival is managed by the China Association for Science and Technology (Cast), a non-governmental organization that serves to promote scientific culture in China. At the festival, the INFN invites visitors to see how particle physicists develop their particular and sophisticated “cameras”, detectors designed to be sensitive to light and particles: they are, in fact, instruments able to see different “colors”, ie different characteristics of the constituents of matter and cosmic messengers. The exhibition space of the INFN host two interactive installations with which the young Chinese visitors, the main target audience the festival, will play, getting acquainted with the work of researchers. “Make Collisions” is a multimedia installation, with which they will interact with the display of two beams of particles that collide and produce photons and other particles, similar to what happens in an accelerator like the LHC at CERN. The second installation, “The Gift of Mass”, is a display of the Higgs field, which filled the universe immediately after the Big Bang, giving mass to the particles. There will also be posters and a video to introduce children to the world of elementary particles and their interactions. (Red)
