I really liked Samir’s talk, and was happy to say I have at least heard about a lot of what he talked about! At least the big picture ideas, can’t say I know the details of the astrophysics. I really love hearing about how physics works, specially astrophysics, without the use of the math parts. It just leads people to come up with the most fun comparisons to real life events to get people to understand. Doing that is a skill for sure, and he did a great job. I feel like astrophysics especially benefits from this, as a lot of times, the actual numbers associated with these sorts of things are just to big for us to understand really. It’s interesting how much of an interest stars still really are to astronomers, just like the ones looking up at the sky centuries ago.
Your comments echoed many other students’ comments about how Samir was able to make the material relatable. Looking back now at the trip, I wonder how you feel these Presentations and historical biographies prepared you guys for what you saw in London and Cambridge.