Education: Naples Student Chapter teaches optics in North Uganda

Some students at the OSA Napoli Student Chapter proposed helping to strengthen education in developing countries by carrying out an outreach education project in Africa. Professors Luigi Smaldone and Elena Sassi, who taught at the University of Napoli Federico II, gave them some much needed guidance. Based on their advice and the realization that they could reach more students by training teachers than students, the Chapter decided to target their program to high-school teachers. Where they needed real lenses to show focusing and image forming, a plastic bottle did the job of behaving like a perfectly cylindrical or even plano-convex lens. They also found a way to use a hair to show diffraction. After preparing the experiments, they publicized the event in high schools, gathering 40 science teachers from all the districts of North Uganda. They saw more satisfaction the teachers took in discovering again what they had learned from books in a more visible and practical way.