Abhijith M B, the coordinator of the Physics Association has been on a tight schedule, but managed to spare a few minutes after his dinner to speak to the APOGEE English Press. The Physics Association, supported and funded by the Department of Physics, aims to promote the discipline and make it accessible to all. They primarily conduct workshops and talks with professors, alumni, and ‘really established’ seniors to promote ideas and to keep up with the current ‘hot topics’ in Physics.
Abhijith stated that during APOGEE 2022, the Physics Association will be conducting two events—a film screening and a meme competition. Talking about the film screening, Abhijith explained that this is an event that the association does every APOGEE, and that the film would essentially be a 90–120 minute BBC documentary edited to suit the needs of physics enthusiasts (read: cutting out all the boring maths). The screening is being held on April 8th, 11:30 PM at NAB. Abhijith believes that after all the exhausting events of the fest, students will find the movie screening to be a place where they can come, chill, have fun, and still gain something of substance.
The meme competition is something that was conceived last APOGEE, which was hosted online. ‘A lot of BITSians are very creative and innovative in making memes and we wanted to channel that into Physics’, said Abhijith. This online meme competition will involve some physics concepts, a few Encrypted Dimension-themed meme templates, and a lot of creativity. The memes wills be graded on predefined criteria and Instagram polls. Last year, over 175 people participated in this event, and Abhijith expects this year to be just as successful.
When asked how this fest feels different from previous fests, Abhijith mentioned that events this year, unlike the online fests, have the scope to be more interactive. Talking about the roadblocks faced by the association, he stated how it is much more difficult to draw people to your event and how there is an added burden of logistics in an offline fest. Abhijith also revealed that they had prepared two more events which later had to be scrapped.
‘Coordinating an event in a huge tech fest has increased my responsibility and has shown me what real teamwork feels like.’ said Abhijith, when asked about his experience being a coordinator for the fest.
He urged people to not get intimidated by the daunting mathematics behind Physics and instead explore more of the subject. ‘Physics is something which you can observe anywhere and everywhere if you’re just curious.’ he concluded.