By N. P. Krishna Kumar
HAVE you ever wondered about the most prestigious international honor, the Nobel Prize and what is the path to that ultimate prize? A workshop is being held by the Nobel Museum Foundation on the topic in Dubai Sunday (Feb. 12).
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The Nobel Museum attracts visitors from all segments of the society, highlighting the contributions of Nobel Prize winners in the field of medicine as well as the key role of Islamic scientists in this area over the years.
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It will be conducted by Gustav Källstrand, senior curator of the Nobel Museum in Sweden, and Anna Sjöström Douagi, program director of the Nobel Center, who will look back at the ideas that changed the world, exploring their characteristics and the driving forces behind them, and citing examples from nominees and laureates of the Nobel Prize in Physics.
The event is being held at Children’s City — Dubai Creek Park at 11 a.m.
This is the third consecutive year the Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation (MBRF) is hosting the Nobel Museum in Dubai to promote knowledge and innovation among the youth and in society as a whole.
The 10-year partnership by the MBRF with the Nobel Foundation began in 2015. In the first year, the exhibition was on the general topic of the Nobel Prize, while last year the focus was on Medicine and Physiology. In 2018 the focus will be on Chemistry, and in 2019 on Literature.
In 2020, the year of the expo, the Nobel Museum will have a bigger exhibition which will be organized at a bigger venue.
MBRF has also plans to take the Nobel Museum to other Emirates and also other countries in the Gulf and Arab world in the future.
Nobel Museum: Understanding matter
Earlier on Feb. 6, edition of the Nobel Museum on the theme ‘The Nobel Prize in Physics: Understanding Matter’, was opened at Children’s City, and will go on until March 5.
The Nobel Museum is designed to introduce the public to the discoveries and scientific achievements of Nobel laureates in physics, which have played a significant role in improving people’s lives.
Dr. Olov Amelin, director of the Nobel Museum in Sweden, who was present at the inauguration, hoped the exhibition would inspire young Arabs to contribute to future discoveries in physics.
The Nobel Museum 2017 is made up of eight different sections: The Rays and Waves section allows visitors to discover the interior of objects and bodies using X-ray imagery, while the Matter section presents an interactive table with three touchscreens, allowing visitors to build atoms and learn about their constituent parts and the properties of elements.
Stars and Universe offers visitors a completely immersive experience with a video projected on a large screen, taking them on a journey through our universe.
The Electronics section, meanwhile, allows visitors to build their own electronic inventions.
In the Quantum Physics section – “A Quantum World” – a projection allows the visitor to explore different effects in quantum physics. The audience will have a chance to witness a real-life Cloud Chamber, where cosmic particles leave tracks that can be seen by the audience.
The museum also offers a VR Experience, where visitors can go on a journey through the cosmos using virtual reality equipment.
Last but not the least, visitors will be introduced to the different Nobel laureates in the Laureate Arena.
Golden age of Arab science
The exhibition also has an important section on the Arab contribution to physics, especially in mathematics, optics, astronomy and astrophysics, which laid the foundations for Western advances in science.
The work of Muhammad Ibn Musa Al-Khwanizmi’s in Algebra and astronomy; Abad Al-Rahman Al-Sufi in astronomy; Alhazen Ibn Al-Haytham in optics and discovery of the ‘camera obscura’; and Al-Biruni in physics, mathematics and astronomy; Taqi ad-Din in mathematics, astronomy among others, from the period from 9th Century to late 13th or early 14th Century can be considered the golden age of Arab science.
Many scientific instruments devised by these Arab scientists were the sun dial, astrolabe, perfect compass and the camera obscura.
More workshops
The MBRF in partnership with the Nobel Foundation is organizing four other workshops in the weeks ahead, conducted by high-profile scientists, academics, and innovators.
On Sunday, Feb. 19, Ulf Danielsson, professor of Theoretical Physics at Uppsala University – Sweden, will conduct the second workshop exploring ‘Dark Energy, Cosmology, Black Holes, and String Theory’.
Meanwhile, during the Lunar Journey Workshop on Tuesday, Feb. 21, Fatma Lootah and Khalid Badri ask “How many moons are out there? How were they formed? What do they look like? What makes moons the way they are?”
In a fourth workshop on Sunday, Feb. 26 – titled ‘A Century of Nobel Physics: Science Changing the World’ – Olof Somell, assistant curator at the Nobel Museum in Sweden, looks back at Nobel Prize-awarded physics breakthroughs, their impact on the 20th century, and their continued influence in our daily lives today — from the wireless telegraph to modern telecommunications.
Last but not the least, the final workshop on Tuesday, Feb. 28, features Hessa Al Matroushi, instrument science lead on the UAE Mars Mission at the Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center (MBRSC); Eman Al Tunaiji, engineer in the Applications Development and Analysis at MBRSC; and Maryam Al Shamsi, space science engineer at MBRSC.
The Stellar Journey Workshop follows in the ethos of the Lunar Journey Workshop, this time shifting the focus onto the stars. The experts from MBRSC take the audience on a journey through space and time, exploring the story of a star’s formation, its life cycle, and its ultimate fate. Attendees will also learn how to distinguish between different stars and how to classify them. — Al Arabiya English
