Our 2024 event was hosted on Tuesday 27 August at the new venue of Abercrombie Hotel in Chippendale, Sydney and MC'ed by the inimitable Dr Phil Dooley.

• Red Clump stars are very important - astronomers love them. Which is why other stars try to impersonate them - Kirsten Banks (UNSW) is out to unmask these imposters.
• Nanofabrication machines are amazing at making really small things. REALLY small. Smaller than light - so how can you see what you are doing? Lesley Spencer (UTS | TMOS) has that superpower.
• Rachel Rayner (CSIRO | Rayner Explainer) is reaching out to the folks in Newtown who are looking for a psychedelic side to life. She says quantum mechanics is all they need.
• Lorna Jarrett and Dean Cutajar (Wollongong) believe musical instruments are magical - and they are going to explain how that magic works (spoiler: I think it’s physics).
• Daniel Terno (Macquarie Uni) wrote a paper about wormholes. His family didn’t like it - they stopped talking to him after that.
• Lachlan Rogers (Newcastle Uni | EQUS) runs the EQUS podcast, and explores the sounds of quantum. According to his guests it could sound like Mozart. Or the sound of a vacuum pump.
• Ian Falconer (USyd) also has a number of superpowers, that he learnt last century. He’s going to demonstrate amazing skills with a sliderule, graph paper and a pencil!
• Despite what people say, Jahanvi Maheshwari (UNSW) is not a cosmetologist. Not in any universe. To prove it he’s going to talk multiverses with us.

Physics in the Pub is an annual event of the NSW Branch of the Australian Institute of Physics hosted by Dr Phil Dooley (Phil Up On Science)

Exploding stars, wombat poos & the zombie apocalypse: Physics in the Pub

The unique pub night will prove that physics can do anything - explain square wombat poos, predict a supernova or protect us from the zombie apocalypse.

Recorded at our new cosy venue, the Barrie in Chippendale, for a big night of physics from local scientists from across the region. This year featuring a third set, full of the most outlandish, unexpected and preposterous science - all peer reviewed! With quizzes, live experiments and full-body demonstrations it was a night to remembered.

More Info: https://www.facebook.com/events/229133536425357

THE 2023 LINE UP:

1. Scott Martin is so scared of the zombie apocalypse that he put it in a risk assessment. Management were not amused (but I sure am!)
2. Orion’s shoulder, the red giant star Betelgeuse, is behaving strangely. Is it about to explode and give us an amazing light show, asks Graeme Melville (UNSW).
3. If you’ve found learning physics tricky, then you need to try belly dancing says Lorna Jarrett (Wollongong, Uni).
4. Many bushwalkers have wondered how wombats do such square poos. Jack Foster (Sydney Uni) has tried to do the physics and it’s a mystery. More experiments are needed (and may happen onstage)
5. Eric the plesiosaur is one of Australia’s most famous, priceless fossil, complete with fossilised lunch. Josh White (ANU/Aust Museum) analysed Eric’s lunch with micro CT scan. (looks like fish and chips).
6. Kovi Rose (Sydney Uni) studies dwarf stars that are so small they can’t sustain fusion. He says these “cold, failed” stars deserve our love and affection. They are after all ultra-cool.
7. Phil Dooley (Phil Up On Science) is amazed at how good you are at Fourier Transforms - just doing them in your head, without showing the working!
8. Sepehr Saryazdi (Sydney Uni) is showing off the graphing app Desmos - it’s a cool, under-appreciated tool that he says has the capacity to immensely improve education!
9. Simon Crook (CrookEd Science) is amused by the” funny and sometimes funnily appalling mispronunciations” of physicists’ names (mostly dead white guys). He’ll quiz us on it, so practise them up!
10. Consider a spherical… NOT SO FAST, says Enbang Li (Wollongong, Uni). He’s going to show how gravity around an asymmetric mass can be pretty unusual.

View all of the 2023 acts in one Youtube playlist: HERE (or click on the embedded image below)

View all of the 2022 acts in one Youtube playlist: HERE (or click on the embedded image below)

2021 Snapshots from Physics in the Cloud