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25 August 2022 | Story Anthony Mthembu | Photo Supplied
Day-residence representatives hard at work during the outreach programme aimed at attracting off-campus students to join any of the several day residences.

The impact of COVID-19 on students who started their studies at the UFS in 2020 and 2021, is the fact that they had to experience the UFS student life virtually. As such, the ability to experience day-residence culture was minimal.
Consequently, the SRC: Day Residences, Nontando Kalipa, along with representatives from the seven day residences and the SRC, visited off-campus accommodation as a means to market day residences. The initiative ran from 1 to 4 August 2022. “We went to various communes and other student accommodation such as Quattro, CampusKey, and ResPublica, and explained our mandate as SRC: Day Residences to the off-campus students,” Kalipa expressed.

The Importance of the Initiative

According to Kalipa, there is a lack of knowledge about the role and relevance of day residences in student life; this was seen in the responses received from some of the off-campus students who were approached during the outreach. “We came across some students who had never heard of day residences, and others who knew of them but didn’t really understand their function,” stated Kalipa. Therefore, she insisted that representatives from the respective day residences should also be involved in the initiative. “The RC primes were there specifically to share their experiences about day residences with off-campus students,” said Kalipa.

The Relevance of Day Residences in Student Life

“Day residences offer a holistic student experience, so off-campus students can expect any of the seven day residences to assist them in becoming well-rounded individuals,” expressed Corbin Butler, the incoming SRC for Day Residences. These spaces offer off-campus students access to cultural and sporting activities, such as Stagedoor, SingOff, and basketball tournaments, among others. On-campus students have the advantage of being exposed to other students from all walks of life and interacting with them consistently. As such, Butler maintains that day residences aim to bridge the existing gap by creating that very same experience for off-campus students. “We don’t want you to just get a degree and leave, we also want to capacitate you with life skills, and that’s the benefit of being part of a day residence,” Butler stated.

News Archive

Einstein's gravitational waves as creative as Bach's music, says UFS physicist
2016-02-19

Description: Gravitational waves  Tags: Gravitational waves

Profile of the gravitational waves of the colliding black holes.

Prof Pieter Meintjes, Affiliated Researcher in the Department of Physics at the University of the Free State, welcomed the work done by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) science team.
 
For the first time, researchers from two of the American Ligo centres, in Washington and Louisiana respectively, observed gravitational waves directly, 100 years after Albert Einstein said they existed. "My study field in astrophysics involves relativistic systems. Therefore, Einstein's view of gravity is crucial to me. I consider the theory as the highest form of human creativity - just like the music of JS Bach. Over the past 100 years, the theory has been tested through various experiments and in different ways.
 
“The discovery of gravitational waves was the last hurdle to overcome in making this absolutely unfaltering. I am therefore thrilled by the discovery. It is absolutely astounding to imagine that the equations used to make the predictions about the gravitational-wave emissions when two gravitational whirlpools collide - as discovered on 14 September 2015 by LIGO - are basically Einstein's original equations that were published way back in 1916 - in other words, 100 years ago.
 
“The LIGO detectors have been operational since the early 1990s, but they had to undergo several stages of upgrades before being sensitive enough to make detections. LIGO is currently in its final stage, and is expected to function at optimal sensitivity only within a year or two. To be able to conduct the measurements at this stage is therefore a fantastic achievement, since much more funding will certainly be deposited in the project,” Prof Meintjes says.

Description: Prof Pieter Meintjes Tags: Prof Pieter Meintjes

Prof Pieter Meintjes
Photo: Charl Devenish

The search for gravitational waves by means of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) is one of the focus points in research by both Prof Meintjes and PhD student, Jacques Maritz. This involves the study of radio signals from pulsars that might show signs of effects by gravitational waves. They are looking for signs of gravitational waves. The gravitational waves discovered and studied in this manner would naturally vary much more slowly than the signal discovered from the two colliding gravitational waves.
 
The discovery will definitely provide renewed impetus to the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Project to use the dispersion of pulsar signals, and to search for the impact of gravitational waves on signals as they travel through the universe. According to Prof Meintjes, the SKA will definitely contribute fundamentally to the Frontier research, which will provide a good deal of publicity for the UFS and South Africa, if significant contributions are made by local researchers in this field.

Video clip explaining gravitational waves

 

  • The Department of Physics will present a general, non-technical talk concerning the recent detection of gravitational waves by the 2 Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatories (LIGO):

Wednesday 24 February 2016
11:00-12:00
New lecture auditorium, Department of Physics

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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