Wednesday, April 17, 2013

#Atoms2Cosmos




After organizing two successful events with the support and participation of Dr.Suleiman Baraka  we managed to attract a huge audience and everyone seemed eager to be a part of this new merging community of Space fanatics to enjoy the beauty of being a human at this moment in time surrounded by the most brilliant discoveries of science. Membership applications were arriving like crazy and the number reached over a hundred applicant some of which are life-long Space Geeks. As I looked through the applications to pick out my ‘’Organizers Team’’ and as I read their answers, I muttered to myself: ‘’Hey, there’s life on this planet, I’m not alone.’’.  The team was selected and I held our first brainstorming meeting to discuss our vision and ideas for the future. And that was the moment when the Diwan Ghazza ‘’astronomy club’’ advanced to be the ‘’Amateur Astronomers Club’’
I was very impressed with their energy and enthusiasm, you could just feel the passion flooding their hearts and eyes and I thought to myself: This is going to be fun!

We all had agreed on the topic of our next event and wheels were turning to get everything ready for the Big Day, the day of our first team event.

The idea of #Atoms2Cosmos was presented by the brilliant  Amjad Shehada (Communication Engineering Student)   He proposed the BBC documentary series and suggested the idea of the event, we all agreed on watching it first and then discussing the selection. And we did.

The team liked the documentary because of its simplicity and elegance, now we had to agree about the dynamic of the event. And another meeting was held.

The Big Day:
We arrived 2 hours earlier to practice and solve any potential problems and avoid any delays. The time was approaching 3 pm and people were arriving and the event was on.



Mohammad Al-Muzaini (Architecture Student) did an amazing job presenting the concept of the today’s event along with a historical background about the discovery of the atom. The interactive introductory was smooth and fun; some space jokes were made and the audience seemed to be pleased.



The second segment of the event was screening the BBC documentary: Atoms, Keys To The Cosmos. The audience watched and tweeted their thoughts and feelings to #Atoms2Cosmos.



The third and final segment of the event was an interactive discussion between the audience and Amjad who presented the interactive video ‘’The Scale Of The Universe’’ http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120312.html and took us from Planck length through atoms, cells, humans, trees, earth, moon, Jupiter, sun, Polaris, the horsehead nebula all the way to the Known Universe just to get a sense of our place in this colossal universe.

Our event has ended and we couldn’t be happier with its success. Our first team event. I couldn’t be prouder of my team. They are brilliant and passionate and we’ll surprise you in our future events, stay tuned!