Let’s combine the history of science, learning science and stolling the beautiful streets of Copenhagen!

I’m Johanne de Leon, MSc. in physics and founder of Science Tours CPH. I find it so interesting how science develop and I love the great stories, fun facts, quotes and myths related to science and tech. Often, scientific discoveries have surprising stories, entirely different from what you expect. I believe, that – a long stretch of the way – these matters can be explained in a non-complicated way to anyone who is curious. That is exactly my primary goal of Science Tours CPH; to explain the science in an easy-to-comprehend way, without compromising the science!

Johanne de Leon, M.Sc.

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Collaborations:

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Update summer 2024

Finally the New Scientist tour happened! 4 years ago, The magazine New Scientist had contacted me regarding a Copenhagen Tour. Then covid came and it’s was on the shelf for a while. But we did it this July at it was great!!! For 5 days a group of engaged and very lovely science tourists came to Copenhagen and learned about the life of Bohr, Brahe, Rømer, Lehmann and many more. Some high lights that I planned were Hauchs Cabinet, which the guests rated as extremely interesting, talks on cosmology at the university and a guided tour at the Niels Bohr institute. Great restaurants and good company and a lot of rain added to a unique travel experience that we will definitely want to do again. It was great to work with Kirker Holidays who coordinated the tour.

During the past year, I have been a consultant for an exhibition  – the 200 year jubilee celebration of SNU – Selskabet for Naturlærens udbredelse. Initialy, I was to create the school material – but soon this project enterprise grew! I took the opportunity to promote one of the great chemists for Copenhagen: S.P.L. Sørensen, who should be know by far more. We are all familiar with his work, the pH-scale (!). And who knew that the scale was “invented” at the Carlsberg brewery? So I though; let’s try to promote the knowledge of the Danish chemists, and fortunately the project managers agreed and Sørensen got a spot at the show along with H.C. Ørsted (the founder of SNU), Niels Bohr, Martin Knudsen and Kirstine Meyer. The SNU team worked hard on the jubilee- exhibition. I authored some of the sections, found props (at Carlsberg!), reviewed texts, did some graphic design, photography and video too. Also, we’ve experimented, invented and tested the interactivities in the lab. It was so much fun to be part of and I am now proud to say that I am a professional content creater for science exhibitions. I’m very excited to see the outcome and it is going to be SO much fun to participate as a guide in the Round tower! I should write some more on this in another post. The teaching material for the exhibition is coming along; it’s on spectral lines and another about pH. Oh, and we made a laboratory-history-of-science-board game (!) to be given to schools visiting the exhibition. It is on from August 17^th – 2024  in the great space of the “Library Room” of the Round Tower in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Last but not least – I am so grateful for the interest so many people had for the tours this year, it’s been so som much fun and so giving to meet all the curious and wonderful people who chose to learn when they travel, who chose to get acquainted with the local culture by diving into the stories of the local scientists! Some came with collegues, some with friends or family and some dropped by on their own. Every tour was different because eveybody have different interests, ask different questions and the conversations evolve differently every time. ❤

Update spring 2023

These days I am curious about how the discoveries came about… Was it really like a lightning striking ⚡? The scientists communicated the discoveries, but what really happened, what were the circumstances of the discovery? When you dive into that question, it turns out that each scientist and discovery seem to be emerged in a soup of events; events that helped the discovery on the way to acceptance and fame; such as the scientific environment, social and personal circumstances, people and methods the scientist knew and so on. No scientist is an island! This does not take away the genius of the scientists such as Tycho Brahe, Hans Christian Ørsted and Niels Bohr, but it may encourage future discoverers to see, that what usually didn’t happen was an old man with Einstein-hair that had some sort of lightning striking ⚡or magical light bulb appearing. Another interesting question in history of science is; should we only learn about the science that led to the science of today? Is “science” really a linear thing, a sequence of discovery after discovery, success after success? What about all the abandoned ideas, the discussions and the experiments that “went wrong”? – are they not also an important part of science? The things that turned out to be wrong carries great knowledge that may contribute to get the full picture of the science of today.

Update spring 2021:

What have I been up to this last year, the Corona year, that did not do a whole lot of good to a new busines of science tourism? Well, it’s not all that bad! In the spring of 2020 I engaged myself in the exciting course History of Quantum Mechanics at the Niels Bohr Institute of the University of Copenhagen. This course is highly recommendable! Brush up on the foundation of quantum theory and quantum mechanics – wow! Reading the original works of Einstein, Planck, Bohr, Schrödinger and Heisenberg is exciting, hard work and just amazing and surprising in a very nerdy kind of way. The equations that I had worked with earlier in my studies made so much more sense, when taking the historical approach. In the summer of 2020, I participated as a guide at the exhibition in The Round Tower in Copenhagen: “H.C. Ørsted anew – The Beauty in Nature!” in celebration of the 200 years of electromagnetism. It was great fun and very giving to talk to so many visitors in the Round Tower. The exhibition showed with great clarity the importance of Ørsted’s contributions to physics, chemistry and medicin, and his invaluable rôle in science development in Denmark. For a while, I have -like so many other teachers- been working from home on Zoom and Teams, trying to teach my students from afar (“So, class – who’s got a thermometer, kitchen scale and some nails at home? Let’s measure the specific heat capacity of those nails… in your kitchen… yes, you may use a potato instead of nails”).

Update fall 2021:

This semester (fall 2021) we have been lucky to be back in school, which is such a releif -on the whole a much better teaching environment than sitting alone online on Zoom in front of the screen. Also, I am now a math teacher at DTU, The Danish Technical University – great fun to teach university levels and a good opportunity to read up on my linear algebra, complex numbers and differential equations! And finally – finally! -science tourists are back – I am so greatful! Winther is coming and Copenhagen will dress accordingly with lights , stars, hearts and Christmas trees everywhere – and maybe snow (I hope!). A good time to stroll through town and talk about science!