Month: May 2020

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Towards a definition of time / Precise time measurement: atomic clocks and their applications

Towards a definition of time
Lecture by Prof. Gaetano Mileti (co-founder of the Time and Frequency Laboratory of the University of Neuchâtel) at the SIHH 2019, Watches & Wonders Geneva (in English)

The philosophers and astronomers who came before us probed the stars and studied their light to understand the universe and observe the passage of time. They learned to measure time in intervals of years, months, days, hours, often as a period or cycle. Nowadays, we are also using light in the same quest for precision and knowledge, but can we proclaim having found universal time?

Precise time measurement: atomic clocks and their applications
Lecture by Prof. Pierre Thomann (co-founder of the Time and Frequency Laboratory of the University of Neuchâtel) at the University of Geneva, in 2011 (in French)

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How an atomic clock works

Bill Hammack shows the world’s smallest atomic clock and then describes how the first one made in the 1950s worked. He describes in detail the use of cesium vapor to create a feedback or control loop to control a quartz oscillator. He highlights the importance of atomic team by describing briefly how a GPS receiver uses four satellites to find its position.

We take lots of things for granted in this world; GPS, the internet and of course particle accelerators. However, none of these things would be possible without atomic clocks.

How Long Is One Second, Really?
Do we really know how long a second is? The science behind how time is actually measured may prove you wrong.

Inside The Most Precise Atomic Clock in the World
From his basement lab in Boulder, Colorado, physicist Jun Ye and his team have built the world’s most precise atomic clock. The clock is so powerful it can measure otherwise imperceptible changes in the physical world. “Have you ever seen the movie called Interstellar? You’ll see some of that in our lab, it’s not science fiction. You can actually see clocks slow down,” explains Ye. In episode seven of The Most Unknown, geobiologist Victoria Orphan travels to JILA—a physics institute jointly operated by the University of Colorado Boulder and NIST—to untangle questions of space and time with Ye and his otherworldly atomic clock.

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Lausanne Zoological Museum

Exhibition “Missing!”

It is estimated that 869 species have become extinct in the last 500 years. Nearly 20,000 are now considered threatened with extinction. Why are so many species disappearing so quickly? Which are the most vulnerable? What mechanisms are causing these disappearances? What are we doing to avoid them?

The museum has a small but beautiful collection of extinct animals that was removed from the exhibition some 20 years ago for conservation reasons. We have decided to exhibit this collection, not only in ideal conditions for these valuable objects, but in a current scientific context, aiming to explain by example certain mechanisms at the origin of the disappearance of species.

This new exhibition space addresses topics such as the conservation efforts undertaken at the local, national or global level, or the 6th extinction.

PDF of the exhibition

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Present your Project | 07–09.05.2020

Teachers: Ferdinand Vogler, Josh Levent

During this course we learned how to present our project in different formats. In 5 and 1 minutes, and in 30 seconds. This is a very interesting way to summarise our ideas and to be able to present them clearly to an audience that knows nothing about them.

Pitch in 5 minutes

Pitch in 1 minute
The permanent exhibition Space and Time: Stories from the Neuchâtel Observatory wants to offer the public a dive into the origins of time measurement in the Neuchâtel area over the last 150 years.
In an Art Nouveau style building, visitors will be able to discover how the industrial era accelerated the making of time, how the observation of the movement of stars and then atoms made it possible to make ever more precise measurements, to arrive at atomic clocks with a margin of error of one second every 30 million years!
To allow the visitor to understand this complex subject, images, videos, objects and texts from other fields such as art, philosophy and science will be on display. For example: the painting of Dali’s soft watches or the first image of a black hole.

Pitch in 30 seconds
What is time? The exhibition Space and Time: Stories from the Neuchâtel Observatory will offer to the public a dive into the origins of time measurement in the Neuchâtel area.

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Youtube Strategy for Museum

Kickstart Your Museum’s YouTube Strategy

YouTube Strategy for Museums is a bite-sized course designed to be completed in an afternoon. You’ll be led through a series of nine exercises to get you thinking about how to use YouTube for your museum.

The course features examples from some of the most successful channels on YouTube, including the work that our course leader Wouter van der Horst from We Share Culture has done for the Rijksmuseum.

The course is £50.

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A brief history of art, from the Renaissance to the 20th century

How can you tell Leonardo da Vinci from Michelangelo?
A Monet from a Manet? A Picasso from a Braque?
And this sculpture, should it be attributed to Bernini or Rodin?
To answer these questions and many others, Orange and the Rmn-Grand Palais have once again joined forces to propose a MOOC in 5 sequences.
The MOOC A brief history of art gives the keys to understanding works from the 16th to the 20th century, and solid tutorials to learn how to read a painting, a sculpture or even a monument. All this in a playful and practical form.
It will allow everyone to refresh their knowledge and rediscover the masterpieces of our artistic heritage. It can also be a solid base for all pupils and students preparing their art history exams.

Interesting project to see how to popularize art history to the public. The trailer is very successful with these photo montages!