Contributed by Ken Engsmyr, Rotary Club of Parkes
In August 2017 Yasmin Potts packed her travel bag, her mum and dad drove her from Parkes to Mascot Airport, and she flew out for London: her first overseas trip; first flight on an A380; first Parkes High School student to attend a London International Youth Science Forum (LIYSF). She also visited CERN where the European Organization for Nuclear Research is located, where they operate the Large Hadron Collider, and where the Higgs boson particle was recently discovered. An extraordinary journey made possible by her local Rotary Club.
It is likely that Yasmin’s first experience of Rotary was to hear her grandfather, Keith Potts, talk about his adventures with Parkes Rotary. Yasmin attended a Rotary Youth Program of Enrichment (RYPEN) as a year 10 student in 2015. In 2016 she attended RYPEN again, this time as a group leader. She has been approached to also attend in 2017 as a mentor for group leaders.
Yasmin’s passion is science. It is therefore unsurprising that she applied to attend the National Youth Science Forum that is held in Canberra each year. She found the competitive interview a bit harrowing. “The first thing they asked me as the value of the square root of two. I had a complete mind blank – thought I’d blown it”. But when the panel asked Yasmin to speak about a contemporary science topic she had some subject matter. “I’d just attended the Astrofest in Parkes. They had a speaker talking about the detection of gravity waves using the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) based in the US. It seems I managed to convince the panel that I really was interested in science. I suspect it was the first time some members of the panel had heard about LIGO”.
Australia selects students to attend the LIYSF from participants in the National Youth Science Forum. Some of the other 67 countries use other selection methods, including competitions. Yasmin says that, regardless of how they got there, the attendees were extraordinary. So were the scientists she met!
The photo shows Yasmin with Professor Hayat Sindi from Saudi Arabia who presented the opening lecture. Yasmin she says was fascinated not only with Professor Sindi’s science, but also her personal story of pursuing a science career first in Saudi Arabia and then internationally. In fact meeting scientists and participants from all over the world was as much an adventure as the science.
Well done Parkes!