Two worlds collide, to Russ Swan’s delight.
I had not expected, in a minor gallery attached to the gift shop of a larger art gallery, to stumble across a laser interferometer in a glass display case. Scientific apparatus is cool, of course, and the older stuff like ancient brass microscopes and telescopes can be quite pleasingly aesthetic (unlike modern boxes of putty-coloured plastic), but it’s an unusual find in an art gallery.
More unexpected still, this wasn’t just an instrument but a complete laboratory, in miniature scale. There were even little scientists at their stations.
Hang on, because it gets better. This Lilliputian laser laboratory was made of that most versatile of commodities, Lego. That’s fun, I thought, while daring myself to guess what it must cost. I know from painful experience how, er, ambitious some Lego kits can be and this didn’t look like it would be a bargain basement buy.
So, you might imagine my slack-jawed astonishment to learn that this was no toy, but a functioning laser interferometer. Actual lasers, mirrors and beam splitters, mounted in custom Lego components and using standard bricks, on a large Lego baseboard which is both the laboratory floor and the optical table.
This is a project called Photon Bricks, an initiative from the University of Nottingham’s Gravity Laboratory, to make quantum science more accessible and engaging.
Scientific apparatus is cool, of course, and the older stuff like ancient brass microscopes and telescopes can be quite pleasingly aesthetic (unlike modern boxes of putty-coloured plastic), but it’s an unusual find in an art gallery
It’s led by research fellow Dr Patrik Svancara and funded under UKRI’s Quantum Technologies for Fundamental Physics Programme. The idea is to engage secondary school and older students with a hands-on approach to tackle some of the big questions in science. Quantum mechanics, dark matter, gravity and elementary particles, that sort of thing.
Clearly there are going to be some limitations on what can be done with such a kit, but to be able to assemble a device using a system familiar to everybody, and then demonstrate phenomena such as interference patterns and the double slit experiment, well that’s pretty cool.
You could argue that Lego is itself a macro-scale representation of the quantum universe, because of its integerdefined modules. A quantum of Lego would be the awkward, difficult to handle, and easily-lost 1x1 unit (which I’ve often thought was more trouble than it’s worth).
That 1x1 unit, part no 3005, is also known as a niblet, or a dots 2, as any ‘Afols’ (adult fans of Lego) will know. The Lego lexicon can easily take the unwary down a rabbit hole, as alternative 1x1s can be known as buttons, candies, creeters, dots 1, nubbies, pips 1, round nipples, single, spots or studs. And that optical table? In Lego-speak, it’s a carpet (as is any baseplate).
Sadly just 20 Lego interferometer kits will be created, and distributed to schools around Nottingham and Cardiff, whose university collaborated on their creation. If you feel like emulating the project, plans and guides will be available at artlab-nottingham.com/lego.
My dreams of having my own Lego laser lab in my lounge also took a knock when I learned that the kit is a bit more than pocket money – £950 of your finest pounds Sterling, including £250- worth of laser components.
