Cross Cultural Science: the Bonn Physics Show goes to China | Herbi Dreiner
Since 2002 we have been organising the Bonn University physics students to put on extensive physics shows for kids aged 9 to 99. The shows consist of many live experiments, often embedded in a story line. Besides being an entertaining form of outreach, for me as a professor, it is an education project, aimed at our physics students. I also get to play with all the experiments!
25 years ago, outreach was minimally funded, if at all. However, in 2012, as part of a large research grant funded by the German government (DFG, CRC 110), we received substantial funding for outreach in elementary particle physics. The grant is based in Bonn but includes the FZ-Jülich, the TU Munich, as well as the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Peking University. With this money we developed a new show on elementary particle physics, which we have taken to Oxford and London, UK (2014), Padua and Trieste, Italy (2015), and Copenhagen and Odense, Denmark (2016).
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Originally, the intention was to take this show also to China. However the obstacles to transporting (and importing!) all our equipment proved prohibitive. Instead we decided to bring the general idea of our shows and our expertise, but using local experiments, with the intention of introducing the Chinese students to Bonn show physics. Just a few days before departure we learned that through a communication error Dr Zhuang Ci, our local contact, had organised for our group to perform a public show for Chinese high-school students on our last day in Beijing. Thus we weren’t just going to host a workshop, we actually had to teach the Chinese students how to perform a show in under a week.....and the show was to be in Chinese! Unfortunately, nobody in the Bonn group speaks any Chinese.
Thus in March 2016, with some trepidation, we got on a plane in Frankfurt headed for Beijing: Seven Bonn students, Michael Kortmann, the Bonn lab technician, and myself. With the help of Prof. Liangzhu Mu (Peking University) we went through their demonstration experiment collection. The next day we assembled with 15 Chinese students, who had volunteered: 11 from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and four from Peking University (PKU). They spent the next five days, all day understanding the experiments, learning how to operate them and – most of all – how to perform them in a show. In between the PKU students organised lunch partners for all of us, so we could eat at the local canteen. Slowly we grew into a team. We split the Chinese students into three groups, each headed by two German students. It was fun to watch them work closely together and to see German humour (much better than its reputation!) easily mesh with Chinese humour.
The day before the show we had the first rehearsal in Chinese. I had asked Prof. Shilin Zhu, a local Chinese physics professor, to attend, to make sure all the physics explanations were correct. It was wonderful to see how much more relaxed the Chinese students were performing, when speaking Chinese; some of them were obviously very comfortable on stage. I was also surprised to see that we could still give significant input. There are important aspects of (physics) presentations: order, angle of the experiment to the camera, facing the audience, etc... which seem universal. In the end the Chinese professor made extensive comments. The Chinese students were very quiet and respectful and I was afraid he was really laying into them. In the end he summarised in English what he had said. He had given the students some basic constructive guidelines on performing. In English they almost sound as if from Confucius: “speaking loudly gives the audience confidence (and makes them receptive for the show)”; “time (i.e. speaking slowly, with pauses) is strength”. He clearly had some theatre experience and his input was very helpful. The next day the show was a great success, possibly the first physics show ever in China! About 120 high school students filled the auditorium. There was much laughter and as far as we could tell the Chinese students performed brilliantly.
In the end it was a godsend, that we could finish with a show. It gave us a goal and clearly focussed our activities. Working with Prof. Mu and the Chinese students was very relaxed and great fun. We laughed a lot together while playing with the experiments, and I think everyone learned a lot as well. For the German students it was tremendous, to teach their expertise in a far-away land, certainly a unique experience. For me personally, it was wonderful to interact with such an inspiring group of young Chinese students; we certainly bridged the cultural gap!
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Our grant was recently extended for another 4 years and we look forward to returning!
Herbi Dreiner is professor of physics at Bonn University, and occasional contributor to this blog.