The Harwell Open Day on Saturday 11th July saw around 15,000 people visiting the site.
The Central Laser Facility opened the doors to all of its facilities: Vulcan, Gemini, Artemis, Octopus and Ultra. Lasers are everywhere in our daily lives, on the 11th of July the public got to learn about lasers and have fun with them. Many visited the heart of Vulcan, one of the world’s most powerful lasers, where 216 people were able to simulate firing a full power shot.
All in all a fantastic day. We made science fun and about 5000 people were lucky enough to see at least one of our lasers.
Many others had fun shooting 2500 balloons using a rather smaller laser. About 400 children found treasure looking through infrared viewers doing the lasers treasure hunt. Many visitors took a wander through the nano-quantum world, visiting danceroom Spectroscopy, an interactive display where visitors could see themselves as energy fields in the quantum world. Children got the chance to dress up as scientist, make their own laser targets and rather than eating marshmallows got to do a real experiment with them.
