on Campus Issue 10 • November 2013 • For daily updates visit www.uwc.ac.za
Inside UWC Rector receives international honour page 2
UWC students streets ahead in JSE investment competition
page 9
UWC heads CERN’s first South Africanled experiment page 11
A great golf day page 16
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Science shows off its splendours, and a Nobel laureate
T
he University of the Western Cape celebrated its rising scientific standing at the Faculty of Natural Science Research Open Day at the end of October. After the opening formalities, guests got down to business – two days of lectures and presentations from UWC postgraduate students conducting research in biology, chemistry, physics, computer science, nanoscience, cosmology and more, where they explained how their work helps to develop computerised tools to help translate sign language, supercomputer simulations of galaxy evolution, and mathematical models of HIV/AIDS. There was also a blue-ribboned guest. The 2012 Nobel Laureate for Physics, Professor Serge Haroche of the Collège de France and the École Normale Supérieure in France, was the special guest, delivering an open lecture – with plenty of school learners in attendance – on The Power and Strangeness of the Quantum World. Haroche argued that the usual understanding of the world does not apply to sub-atomic particles like electrons and photons operating in the strange and sometimes-paradoxical realms of quantum physics. Here the same object can exist in different states simultaneously or travel multiple routes to get somewhere all at once. Haroche explained how quantum theory opened up the microscopic world, giving scientists the keys to most modern technologies, be it computers, CD and DVD laser technology, and even the internet. He added that the biggest problems facing South Africa and the world, from climate change to health and socio-economic
Learners listen to Nobel laureate Prof Serge Haroche delivering his lecture on the weird wonders of quantum world. problems, can be understood, addressed and solved through science. But for that to happen scientists need to work in an environment where they are not pressured to produce specific results in a limited period of time, he said. “New technology is born from blue sky research, and time and trust is needed for this.” Haroche also had advice for young scientists starting out: “Don’t be intimidated by all the knowledge that is out there. You don’t have to know everything – you just need to know one thing before the others.” Research Open Day organiser and UWC nuclear physicist, Professor Nico Orce, hailed the event as a huge success. The real value of the Research Open Day lay not only in the sharing of scientific knowledge in academic presentations and exhibits, but also in the exposure to great minds and ideas, he said.
Special guest Prof Serge Haroche (second from right), 2012 Nobel Laureate for Physics, with (from left) UWC’s Prof Rob Lindsay, Prof Michael Davies-Coleman and Prof Ramesh Bharuthram at the 2013 Science Research Open Day. “It is a wonderful opportunity to motivate and inspire students, showing them that a Nobel Prize winner is also just an ordinary person like them,” he said. “Maybe one day they’ll be able to inspire others in the same way as Haroche.”