SciPop Talks: Brave New Matter For A Brave New World

Interested in shapeshifting, invisibility and other science fiction tropes? As cutting-edge physics research is reinventing matter itself, phenomena like these are becoming increasingly possible. From metamaterials to claytronics to synthetic biology, this is not your mama's matter—unless, of course, your mama is a condensed-matter physicist.

At the first SciPop talk of the spring, Jocelyn Bosley, Education/Outreach Coordinator for UNL’s Materials Research Science and Engineering Center and curator of the new web resource Funsize Physics, will discuss our entry into a new era of “programmable matter”!

Learn more about “Brave New Matter for a Brave New World: Shapeshifting & Invisibility,” Wednesday, February 3, 2016 at 7:00 p.m. in the Adele Hall Learning Commons (formerly Love Library North 1^st Floor), at 13^th and R Streets in Lincoln, NE. Popcorn will be served. The talk is free and open to the public.

The SciPop talk series combines science and popular culture, and the spring series will mark the third year of these popular talks. The UNL Libraries provide an online list of books and other resources for every talk, which can be found here: http://unl.libguides.com/scipoptalks.

The SciPop talk series builds on the science café model and is co-organized and sponsored by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) Chemistry Department, Doane College, and the UNL University Libraries. Speakers give interactive thirty-minute talks and then take questions. All talks are open to the general public. Over 1,500 individuals have attended a SciPop talk in person, and there have been over 550 unique views of the UNL SciPop Talks six-video collection on YouTube. In summer 2015, there was a special series of ten talks for the National Science Olympiad hosted at UNL, which drew over 1,000 attendees. This speaker series has highlighted over 680 books, videos, and games in the UNL Libraries’ collection.