LAST
YEAR'S PI
Last year’s PI did not start on the second of August, but six months earlier when the executives from seven seminars overcame the fear of crossing the river and came to the first PI meeting. We agreed to invite undergraduate university students and students who had completed secondary school. We collected the suggestions for potential projects from seven different fields (archeology, astronomy, biology, linguistics, biochemistry, molecular biomedicine, physics and psychology), uploaded them on the new web page that all PI-oneers and PI-rates could have an access to. A month later, on the Helium Day and again at the Danube, the team generated the final lists of the associates and students.
We carefully chose applications that came through internet, friends, phones, enemies and former PI-oneers from Israel, France, Great Britain, Germany, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Montenegro and Serbia.
Under number 3.1
415 (since it was held for the fifth time), and only eleven nights after European version of Pi Day, we started this year's two-week adventure. The ultimate goal was that each participant realizes their own methodological project (which was chosen freely, independently of their previous life). Since professor Feynman once said that “we should try not to bore all of them, all the time", all other activities were miscellaneous. First of all, over twenty speakers from seven countries (such as Canada, USA, Hungary and Spain) and ten institutions gathered at PI to offer topics which would interest participants from eight different school systems. Some of the lectures where:
- Msc Jelena Grujić, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid - "What is your strategy?"
- Msc Jelena Milanović, Princeton University, USA - “Building Skins“
- Phd Milan Ćirković, Astronomical Observatory Belgrade, Serbia – ”Mathematical and Physical Reality”
- Msc Vladimir Jovanović, Faculty of Biology, Serbia - "What's the big deal with sex"
- Msc Mirjana Mandić, Faculty of Philology, Serbia - "How we acquire words"
- Msc Laszlo Robert Zsiros, Palace of Miracles, Hungary - “Science Comunication”
- Phd Dragan Mašulović, Department of Mathematics and Informatics, Serbia - “Mathematical intuition and its formalizations“
- Msc Jelena Savić, Petnica Science Center, Serbia - "What we must know of Lyme borreliosis"
- Msc Marko Aleksic, Faculty of Archaeology, Serbia - “ Mediaeval Swords”
All of this was followed by evening movies, morning cartoons, hiking trough the countryside, trip to Belgrade and more. Thank you all for coming to Petnica, and to early morning meetings, working with us and our assistants, for participating in all activities, lectures, competitions and also for returning home. See you again this year!
