Non-Standard Models
Non-Standard Models is a social media project initiated by a group of our PhD students.
Sprinkled with colourful animations, their YouTube videos give fun and informative answers to research questions beyond the Standard Model, like “do extra dimensions exist and why would we need them?” or “what if the Higgs boson is actually a composite particle?”. Watch the videos on YouTube here and subscribe to their channel! You can also follow Non-Standard Models on Instagram and TikTok.
Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften | Long Night of Science
Alongside the Non-Standard Models project, in 2022 and 2023, several of our RTG members participated at Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften, an annual outreach event held in university campuses, museums, and research institutes.
In 2022, RTG members organized three different events on the HU campus in Adlershof. Prof. Dr. Borot presented a talk, “In which dimension do we live?”, connecting geometry to everyday life. In collaboration with the Matters of Activity Excellence Cluster, Prof. Dr. Staudacher presented the Cube of Physics, a sculpture representing current knowledge in physics and highlighting open questions. The creators of Non-Standard Models launched a premiere of the first set of episodes.
In 2023, on the Adlershof campus, Prof. Dr. Borot gave a talk titled, “Large random matrices are every- where”, presenting concepts central to his research in an accessible way. On the Berlin Mitte campus, RTG members organized an interactive three-part event called “Playing Cards with the Quantum Devil”, as well as a one-on-one Q&A event, “Swipe Right on Theoretical Physics, a Speed Dating Adventure”. In the first part of “Playing Cards…”, visitors measured the speed of light with a chocolate bar and a microwave and learned about special relativity and its importance. The second part was a performance about understanding Bell’s inequality through playing cards. The third part introduced the concept of holography and featured a hologram built by PhD students as well as mini-holograms for visitors to take home. In “Swipe Right. . . ”, new episodes of Non-Standard Models were shown to help spark the conversations about physics and physics careers between visitors and 15 participating RTG members.
