The group Physics for everyone, a group created by former members of the SPIE student chapter of the Universidad Autonoma de Nuevo Leon, have been conducting activities for kids, teenagers and the general public through the program “Optics for everyone” since its creation in 2013. The objectives of this group and this program are to teach the importance of light, optics, and photonics to understand the world where we lived and the advances in technology. Also, the group prepares undergraduate students to learn and teach optics and photonics before taking the corresponding curricular courses, conducting to a new approach of how to understand the light interactively. This work presents a summary of the activities performed during five years, the outcomes obtained, the number of people reached, the experience of the volunteers and the conclusions and future work of the program and the group. Among the outstanding contributions of the programs is included the performance of optics and photonics workshops in public schools and public places, including unprivileged and remote communities in the state of Nuevo Leon, Mexico.

Date Published: 2 July 2019
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 11143, Fifteenth Conference on Education and Training in Optics and Photonics: ETOP 2019, 111433Q (2 July 2019); doi: 10.1117/12.2523854

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 11143:
Fifteenth Conference on Education and Training in Optics and Photonics: ETOP 2019
Anne-Sophie Poulin-Girard; Joseph A. Shaw, Editor(s)