Event 3: UNESCO’s Lighfest
Figure 1: Jaela Manuel at UNESCO's Lightfest UNESCO’s Lighfest was an interesting experience especially as a chemistry major. Although chemistry is often associated with chemicals, a lot of the science behind reactions require light for the excitation of electrons. Certain light has wavelengths that determine its overall color and characteristics so this festival was a topic I could understand. Walter Gekelmen’s lecture on “Using lasers to map the motion of ions in a plasma physics experiment” focused on the science of photons getting excited by lasers which makes them detectable for X-rays was not only intriguing but beautiful see with its various colors on the screen for different ions. I found Dr. Gekelmen’s research to be similar to a research panel at UCLA where one of the presentations tracked diseases in mice with a dye that lit up on X-rays; unsurprisingly, it was the one I found most interesting with the color alone. Figure 2: Tracking ions thro...
