ENTROPY, VIRTUAL PARTICLES, black holes, baby universes and a bet that cost its loser a year's subscription to Penthouse magazine were just a few of the items on the agenda for more than 100 secondary school students last weekend.
They were at a physics seminar, but one that was light years away from the kind of dry science lesson that can be delivered on an uninspired curriculum.
This one was part of the Stephen Hawking roadshow, a run-up to a visit by the great physicist and author to Hong Kong University of Science and Technology next week.
Professor Hawking, 64, who talks with the aid of a speech synthesiser and is confined to a wheelchair after developing amyotrophic lateral sclerosis - a neurodegenerative condition - when he was at Oxford University, is set to deliver the inaugural lecture at HKUST's Institute For Advanced Studies.
Last Saturday's warm-up lecture, Professor Hawking and Black Holes: Earlier Work by Hawking and Related Astronomical Observations, was delivered in Cantonese by Michael Wong Kwok-yee, associate professor in the department of physics.
Although there are seven seminars in the series, called Perspectives on the Origins of the Universe, including Professor Hawking's, only three are aimed at secondary school level. The other two are The Space-time of Hawking: a Brief Introduction on Hawking's Life, His Work in Physics, and his View on the Nature of Space and Time, by Professor Chen Tianwen, in Cantonese tomorrow, and How Our Universe Began - String Theory Perspective, by Professor Henry Tye Sze-hoi, in English, on Tuesday. Both are in the Lam Woo lecture theatre at HKUST.