Stage a trivia contest. Screen a film. Open your lab to tours. Post science facts in shop windows. Whatever it is, do something to show the public how physics is relevant in everyday life. That’s what physics organizations everywhere are exhorting their members to do in 2005, the World Year of Physics.
Next year is the centenary of Albert Einstein’s “annus mirabilis,” when he published his pioneering papers in special relativity, quantum mechanics, and, Brownian motion. Celebrating Einstein’s achievements and their impact on society “was the ideal choice” for a World Year of Physics, says Martial Ducloy, chair of the project’s international steering committee and past president of the European Physical Society.
The idea grew out of a conversation Ducloy had in late 2000 with Nobel laureate Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and a few other physicists. “2000 was the World Mathematical Year, and naturally we came to the idea that a World...