St Mary’s Physicists Inspire Year 10 and 11 Girls

The School of Sport, Health and Applied Science (SHAS) at St Mary’s University, Twickenham hosted a Women in Physics taster event on Wednesday 4^th February. The event was aimed at encouraging young women to get into physics with Year 10 and 11 pupils from Orleans Park and Waldegrave School attending. The Women in Physics taster sessions are organised by Dr Elisabetta Canetta, Applied Physics Lecturer, and Alasdair Robertson, Senior Recruitment Officer for Widening Participation, and are held at the University’s Strawberry Hill campus. The purpose of the session was to encourage female students to have the confidence to follow careers in physics with a focus on the fact that being a woman should not hinder your success. Dr Canetta introduced the event with a lecture entitled The beauty of Physics and Nature, which taught the pupils about the many-fold marvels that nature offers us and how to enjoy their beauty by exploring the underpinning physical concepts. After the lecture, the pupils conducted experiments with staff and students from St Mary’s undergraduate Applied Physics programme. At the end of the event they had the opportunity to ask female students from the course about careers in physics. Dr Canetta said, “The high level of engagement and interest shown by the school girls was absolutely incredible. The girls were very inquisitive and asked very deep questions about the physics underpinning the experiments that they were performing. In the questions and answers session the girls asked to my female physics students and me very good and thoughtful questions about our experiences as female students in physics and later as professional physicists. They also inquired if we ever felt disadvantaged in our studies or careers by being women and how we coped with the sexism that at different stages in our study and professional lives we had been subjected to” Kay Penly, Co-Head of Science at Waldegrave School, said, “We were delighted to have such a high uptake of Physics at A level in our first year of Waldegrave sixth form.  Events like this are so important in allowing our students to talk to other female physicists and challenge stereotypes. I believe that attending last year influenced their decision to stay on and study physics in the Sixth form.” The taster sessions form part of a wider Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths (STEM) initiative by Dr Canetta to get more women into physics, which she explores in Women in Physics: A High Challenge for a High Reward. The next Women in Physics taster session will be held on 10^th June 2015. For more information, please contact Dr Canetta at elisabetta.canetta@stmarys.ac.uk.