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https://www.science.org/content/article/and-winner-science-s-2026-dance-your-ph-d-contest>
"Sofia Papa started studying physics in high school because she thought the
subject “was married with art in a nice way.” Both scientists and artists are
driven by curiosity about the world around them, she says, and she dreamt of a
future in which these different means of exploring unanswered questions could
enrich each other.
In the years that followed, Papa tried to combine these two passions wherever
possible—and now Papa has found the ultimate way to unite them. The graduate
student at the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies is the winner of this
year’s top prize in Science’s annual “Dance Your Ph.D.” contest, a competition
in which scientists express their research through dance.
In Papa’s winning entry, she and five other dancers—in red and blue outfits
representing positive and negative charges, respectively—re-create the
piezoelectric effect, the ability of some crystalline materials to generate
electricity when subjected to stress. The property is a critical component of
technologies such as cigarette lighters and quartz watches. Papa’s dance, full
of twists and turns, uses movement as a metaphor for the differences between
crystalline and semicrystalline materials, as well as how the charges can
become displaced under certain conditions.
The performance is directly tied to a specific application of Papa’s Ph.D.
work: creating functional ultrasound transducers, devices that convert
electrical energy into sound waves and vice versa to produce ultrasound images.
She discovered the Dance Your Ph.D. competition at an apt time—when she was
both looking for a way to translate physics into dance and happened to be a
member of a professional dance company called .MOV. Papa first developed the
concepts of each scene for her Ph.D. dance and how she wanted them to translate
into choreography. Then she collaborated with other dancers in her company to
work out the details. Inspired by this work, the company plans to produce a
series of dances to explain other physics concepts."
Via Muse, who wrote "They are all so much fun!"
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
