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The
current month is a hot season for physics in the country.
Two
physics societies will be holding their respective annual
conventions this month in different places in the country.
The
Samahang Pisika ng Pilipinas, a national physics organization
based in Metro Manila will hold its annual congress in Los
Banos, Laguna.
Another
society, the Samahang Pisika ng Visayas at Mindanao (SPVM)
chose as its venue the beautiful island of Bohol, in the city
of Tagbilaran, from 25 to 27 of this month at the Holy Name
University.
There
is a third physics society based in the Visayas called the
Philippine Physics Society that holds their annual gathering
in April of each year. The three groups are so far the only
surviving national physics societies in the country today.
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SPVM
is an organization of physicists, physics teachers,
students and physics enthusiasts based in Mindanao but
has members from almost all regions in the country.
In
fact, its slated annual physics conference and workshop
next year will be held in the cool, beautiful pine city
of Baguio.
Apart
from the usual fare of changing pedagogies in teaching
physics, the participants will be updated on some of
the current physics research and development works in
the country.
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Aside
from citations and recognitions in the country, there is a
call for the Philippine government to invests significantly
on basic physics R&D in particular, and science and technology
in general to reach higher goals in the field, perhaps lead
to Nobel prize-winning work.
For
the mean time, some bright, young Filipino physicists are
sticking it out in poorly paid academic positions rather than
join the bandwagon in finding greener pastures abroad.
At
least for them, understanding the deep secrets of physical
nature and communicating it to the younger generation of Filipino
students is an attraction and a great motivation in itself.
And
maybe their own native inventions will bring economic success.
A
case in point is the World Wide Web or WWW. It's hard to imagine
what global business would be like without the web. And the
web's impact on culture worldwide is still evolving.
Tim
Berners-Lee invented WWW in a high energy physics laboratory
in Geneva to be used by people asking questions like: what
is matter made of? Will forces in the universe become one?
Why are there quarks and electrons and neutrinos? Or like
how did the universe come to be? Or are there extra dimensions
of space?
During
the congress in Tagbilaran City, teachers and young people
will hear also some physicists coming from India, Japan, Korea
and Taiwan on possible answers to these tantalizing questions.
Are
these really important topics? Well, at least they are for
the Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretical Physics
(ICTP) in Trieste, Italy because the Office of External Affairs
of ICTP has just given SPVM a generous funding to bring some
of these physicists to Bohol for the First Asian Regional
High Energy Physics Meeting in conjunction with SPVM 2007.
If
you are a physics student or a physics teacher or just a plain
enthusiast but are interested about new stuff please visit
http://physics.msuiit.edu.ph/spvm
for details. Or you may contact directly the Convention Director,
Engr. Juliet Espiritu of the Holy Name University in Tagbilaran
City at 09173044609 or at 09173949220.
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