The Biophysical Society recently sponsored a half-day event, “Introducing Biophysics to Highschools,” through the BPS mini-grant program. The event was organized by Marta Bunster, the Laboratory of Molecular Biophysics and the Center for Photonics and Optics at Universidad de Concepción.
Students and teachers were welcomed to the auditorium at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics Science by undergraduate and graduate students from the Molecular Biophysics Lab. They attended lectures concerning different applications of biophysical methods, from remote sensing from satellites looking for environmental parameters, the uses in biomedical devices for diagnosis and detection, to the analysis of single molecules.
The students were then divided into four groups to visit laboratories, where researches and graduate students guided them through the use of different techniques, such as molecule optical tweezers, spectroscopy and microscopy.
Students from various schools in the region were invited, all of them interested in physics. Several even had to travel two hours just to attend! It was a great opportunity to chat science with young people, and it should be continued.
-Marta Bunster
