Writing
Why timekeeping is now on the verge of a giant leap forward in accuracy
A news article on a a fantastic discovery made by US scientists from the University of Colorado in September 2024. They realised the first experimental nuclear clock, which will give us the possibility to increase the precision with which we define the second. In this news article, I speak a bit about the history of time keeping and try to give a simplified overview of the important discovery made in September. Enjoy!
11/2024
A PhD in cups of espresso: how logging my coffee consumption helped me write my thesis
A career article I wrote for PhysicsWorld about my experience as a PhD student. I write about my process of writing the thesis, showing how logging my activity has helped me feeling better with myself and my productivity. As you can see from the figure here, I have logged the data in terms of units of espresso drunk per day and used these as a measure of my daily performance.
11/2024
Appears on
How Simone Biles does it: her signature moves explained
During the Olympic games of 2024, Simone Biles succeeded across the board, getting all the spotlights on her. In an attempt to dive into the world of such a record-breaker, Phoebe Luckhurst wrote an article for the British Times. She described the athletic success of Simone Biles by joining the points of view of two different experts: Vincent Walduck, chief executive of Heathrow School of Gymnastics in London and myself, as a Physicist working at King’s College London. The experience was quite fun and I really like the article. Enjoy! (Free to read, registration required)
8/2024
Interview with RAI
The Italian national television (RAI) interviews Italians living abroad to give the people back home an idea of what our lives in another country look like. I have had the pleasure to be one of the interviewees! My first experience in front of a camera and I must say, I had a lot of fun! The interview has been used for two different programs: “Casa Italia” and “Gli Italians”. They both go on the online streaming service provided by RAI (free, but registration required).
2024
Public engagement
UK Nanoday 2024
After the success of the year before, UK Nanoday came back in 2024, organised again by the LCN network and hosted at Imperial College London. From the previous edition, I gathered the audience enjoys dancing to science, so this time the focus was particle properties used in quantum mechanics! The public has learnt to dance to spin, wavepackets and tunnelling and heard about the basics of quantum mechanics.
9/2024
Royal society Summer Science Exhibition 2024
Every year, the Royal Society organises and hosts a week-long science festival where researchers and institutions on the territory have a chance to showcase their fascinating science to the general public. They even have special evenings where event goers and hosts dress up a little! For this edition, I took part to the project led by Dr Emilio Pisanty and Dr Margarita Khokhlova from King’s College London. I was tasked with creating the illustration material for the booth and participating as a volounteer to some of the sessions.
7/2024
UK Nanoday 2023
To mark the first UK Nano Day, the LCN hosted an event at Imperial College London, on the 10th of September, honouring the nano- order of magnitude 10-9. Researchers from across the LCN network joined efforts to bring their research outside the labs and universities and deliver it in an enjoyable way to the general public. Taking inspiration from the movements of electrons on metal surfaces, I prepared a dance routine to describe the basics of plasmonics and make the audience play a dancing game.
9/2023
Exhibition Road Festival 2023
As part of the LCN network, I had the chance to participate to the Exhibition Road festival organised by Imperial. I volounteered in two activities: a demo explaining the working principle of a laser – realised by PhD students from Imperial – and a family friendly stand where kids were invited to create a paper crown inspired by carbon nanotube structures.
06/2023
Vittorio Aita, PhD 