The All-Russian Physics Day that took place this Sunday at MEPhI was a real mixture of genres. It was an extraordinary open day of the university, a holiday, an educational event, and a whole system of competitions. And at the same time, the university held the qualifying round of the Rosatom Olympiad in physics, in which more than 2,000 schoolchildren took part.

There were many competitions. There was a physical dictation. There was a physical quiz. There was a career quiz organized by our university Career Club - it also held an online quiz at the same time. What do they call “fifty kopecks” at Atomflot? The correct answer is the icebreaker “Fifty Years of Victory”.

For several hours, the university library turned into a real museum of modern science - here you could see physical experiments, look at radio-controlled tanks, visit virtual reality, and at the same time see how a special device analyzes the chemical composition of suspicious (and maybe even explosive!) substances.

And, of course, the most important part of Physics Day were popular science lectures. Evgeniy Stepin spoke about how supercomputer modeling makes it possible to find out the laws of the digital Universe, and Egor Zadeba spoke about the fact that we are surrounded by the remains of long-extinct stars. We can also watch a conversation (external link) by Professor Vladimir Reshetov about the connection between physics and poetry.

Physics Day also had one very important function - to start campaigning ahead of time for future applicants to enroll with us - the best (as MEPhI is sure) engineering and physics university in the country! That is why a master class on admission was organized for young people, and the photo zone was decorated with an attractive slogan: “Physicist, lyricist, programmer - a student-mythist can do everything!”

On excursions, young people could see our beautiful, not yet faded campus - something that few universities in the capital can boast of. Future (we hope) applicants could stay at MEPhI, if not physically, then spiritually - by leaving an inscription on a wall specially organized for this purpose. Let's hope that these inscriptions will play the role of coins that are thrown into the sea - in order to return here again.

A separate event was addressed not to schoolchildren and students, but to teachers - as part of Physics Day, a round table “MEPhI for teachers” was organized. The event was opened by a speech by MEPhI Vice-Rector Elena Vesna, who spoke about the priorities and opportunities for cooperation between the university and school teachers.

Also speaking at the round table were MEPhI Pre-University teacher Marina Nurusheva, deputy director of the LaPlas Institute Pavel Ryabov, and director of the Institute of Cosmophysics Mikhail Korotkov. Let us recall that MEPhI participated in the All-Russian Congress of Physics Teachers and launched a special master’s program for secondary school teachers.