VALENCIA, 24 Mar. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Science Museum of Valencia will host on Sunday, April 2, the XVIII edition of the Experimenta Fair-Contest of Experiments and Demonstrations.
The event, organized by the Faculty of Physics of the University of Valencia (UV), is a science party that brings physics and technology closer to secondary school students and the general public in a creative and participatory way. Simultaneously at the fair (between 10 am and 1 pm) the Fisicalàndia children’s workshop will be active. The prizes will be delivered from 1:30 p.m.
The fair-contest is expected to involve 300 people, including students and teachers. Free access, it will host 66 posts, with different STEM experimental projects developed by ESO, Baccalaureate and vocational training students, with the help of the tutoring teachers.
The public may ask about the operation and foundations of any of the experiments. Simultaneously, girls and boys will be able to visit the Fisicalàndia workshop to build and understand simple demonstrations based on natural phenomena, the organization details in a statement.
Experimenta, in addition to the fair, includes a contest for the best projects and the project most voted for by the public. A jury made up of university teachers and secondary schools will assess the proper functioning, the correct understanding of the work and the clarity of the explanations. There will be five prizes: four of 300 euros for each category of the contest according to the study cycle, and one of 200 for the project most voted for by the public visiting the fair, as well as different honorable mentions.
The Experimenta coordinator is Chantal Ferrer Roca, professor of Applied Physics and Electromagnetism at the University of Valencia, and the organizing committee is also made up of Jordi Vidal Perona, Miguel V. Andrés Bou and Amparo Pons Martí. “We also have a large number of voluntary collaborators from the faculty (60) and 30 members of the jury are university and secondary school teachers,” says Ferrer.
The works must be experimental and are classified into two types: demonstrations and experiments and, on the other hand, technological application projects. In the explanations, the students (individually or in groups of up to four) must highlight the relationships between natural phenomena and technological applications, explaining the physical principles on which they are based.
The events will end at 1:00 p.m., and the awards ceremony will begin at 1:30 p.m., which will take place in the Santiago Grisolía auditorium of the Valencia Science Museum, preceded by a brief scientific show. At a later date, an exhibition of the award-winning projects will take place, in which videos of the students will be recorded explaining them.
The videos and accompanying materials will be published as educational and outreach materials on the Internet, to disseminate the work of secondary schools and to encourage other groups to carry out experiments and enjoy science first-hand.
The Experimenta Fair has the collaboration of the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology of the Ministry of Science and Innovation (FECYT-Micin) through a competitive project, the Science Museum of Valencia, the Valencia City Council, the Institute of Physics Corpuscular (IFIC) and the Royal Spanish Physics Society among others. Within the University of Valencia, in addition to the Faculty of Physics, the Incorporation Delegation at the University, the Equality Unit, the Scientific Culture and Innovation Unit, and the Permanent Training Service collaborate.
