Congratulations to Katie from Mount Sackville Secondary School who won the Highly Commended Award for the Aged 14 category. Katie explored how the double-slit experiment, using a red laser, reveals the nature of light. Read more below:
Physics has completely changed how I see the world. I conducted experiments in my school lab to demonstrate wave-like interference patterns, carefully measuring the spacing and intensity of the fringes to clearly illustrate the collective behaviour of photons. To deepen my understanding, I researched online experiments with single photons, finding that even photons sent one at a time build up the same interference pattern. This suggests photons interact with invisible counterparts, shadow photons, revealing a hidden complexity in our reality. To effectively communicate these complex findings, I created two metaphorical models: a toy projector, illustrating how what we don’t see shapes what we do see, and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, highlighting our limited perception of reality.
My short video brings these ideas together artistically, visually representing how physics acts as a flashlight, helping us glimpse the unseen reality around us. Through this experiment and these models, physics has shown me a richer, more beautiful reality than I ever imagined, demonstrating that what we see is only a fraction of a much larger, interconnected reality.