The Faculty at the Syed Babar Ali School of Science and Engineering considers that an active program in scientific outreach is vital for the educational progress of our society. In this vein, Physics Department’s Dr. Sabieh Anwar and his team at the Physlab, have been engaged in community outreach through one of the country’s largest science festivals, reaching out to schools infusing a never-ending quest for scientific inquisitiveness, conducting regional lab immersion programs and sharing physics experiments with Universities across Pakistan.
The Physlab were approached by the Pakistani organizers of the International Young Physics Talent Competition, considered the World Cup of Physics, for preparing and mentoring the Pakistani team comprising of students from around the country. Working with Dr. Sabieh Anwar and the Physlab staff comprising Azeem Iqbal, Umar Hasan, and Muhammad Rizwan, these students addressed ten original problems ranging from mind-baffling phenomena such as electric honeycombs, hot water geysers, rollers on rollers, magnetic trains, ultra-hydrophobic water, acoustic lenses and mechanical machines to generate random numbers! The coaching was completed during an intensive three-month long period where these five students were guided towards finding innovative and rigorous solutions to the assigned problems.
Shaheer’s work on the electric honeycomb involved building a structure that enabled the application of high voltages, constructing a housing with transparent conductive electrodes, and infrared imaging—techniques that our Physlab specializes in. We at LUMS are delighted that we could provide the physical environment and the intimate mentoring to young Pakistani students such as Shaheer Niazi and his teammates.
This was Pakistan’s first appearance in the international competition and we are expecting to support the Pakistani team again.
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