The 16th edition of the Experimenta Fair shows 30 projects by high school students
The Experimenta Fair, convened by the Faculty of Physics of the University of Valencia, celebrated its 16th edition on Sunday, April 25 at the Burjassot campus. On this occasion, the School of Engineering (ETSE) hosted the event in person with limited capacity, while it was broadcast for the first time from digital platforms to facilitate that a larger public could enjoy the event regardless of where it was held.
La XVI edición de la Fira Experimenta ha tenido lugar en la Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería para garantizar las medidas de seguridad frente al COVID-19
This initiative is aimed at students of ESO, Bachillerato and training cycles and aims to prepare an experimental project in the STEM field, show it and explain it. Proposals can belong to any topic, although they must highlight some physical principle or its practical application and, especially, its interrelation. The event gathered 150 participants, including teachers and students. More than half of the participants were women. There were more than 30 scientific and technological projects. Even in this period of pandemics, the Fira Experimenta has continued to establish itself as a benchmark in the promotion of scientific culture in València, also adapting to the hybrid format that allowed both face-to-face and online visits.
Participantes en la Fira Experimenta
At first with more nervousness and with greater ease as the day progressed, young students presented their demonstrations and experiments supported by posters they had prepared and additional materials to the public who came to their positions. Attendees approached with interest the tables as soon as students finished the explanation to the previous group, who waited while maintaining the corresponding safety distance.
This initiative is aimed at students of ESO, Baccalaureate and training cycles and aims to prepare an experimental project in the STEM field, show it and explain it. Proposals can belong to any topic, although they must highlight some physical principle or its practical application and, especially, its interrelation.
In addition, the student teams had the opportunity to describe and teach their demonstration to the audience that followed the event online, which reached up to 99 people simultaneously and reached 1,750 views in the three hours of broadcast. This was in addition to the 800 face-to-face visits the fair received.
Within the Fira Experimenta itself, children were able to participate in the Fisicalandia workshop. Through games and experiences, they verified physical phenomena in a simple way that stimulated their curiosity, something very important in the scientific field.
For the first time since 2015 the event didn’t take place in the Science Museum, due to Por primera vez desde 2015 no se ha celebrado desde 2015, el Museu de la Ciència, due to recent changes in the location of mass vaccinations within the City of Arts and Sciences. Therefore, in order to guarantee health measures, it was chosen the ETSE building, in Burjassot, as it is outdoors and with roofing.
Award winning projects
The awarded winning projects in each of the categories were “¡Uy qué tensión!” del IES Peset Aleixandre de Paterna (categoría Física-ESO), “Electromagnetismo y resonancia para salvar vidas”, del colegio San José de Calasanz de Valencia (Física-Bachillerato), “Clases sin COVID ni resfriados” del IES Ramón Llull de Valencia (Tecnología-ESO) y “PÈSER 1.0- Geolocalitzador orientador láser” del IES Cañada de Paterna (Tecnología- Bachillerato).
Likewise, the public vote was carried out this year thanks to a new method through a link that facilitated the task of virtual visits. In this edition, the project “Cohete de agua” of the schoolNuestra Señora del Pilar (Física-bachillerato) received the award. On May 14, the awards and honorable mentions ceremony will take place in the Darwin room on the Burjassot campus.
Thanks to the work of the organizing committee, made up of Chantal Ferrer as coordinator, Miguel V. Andrés, Jordi Vidal, and Amparo Pons, the event could be held, as well as with the support, among others, of 20 members of the jury, university professors and of secondary education and 40 collaborators and collaborators, and students of the Faculty of Physics.
In the initiative it also collaborated Fundación Española para la Ciencia y la Tecnología (FECYT-MICINN) y otras entidades como el Ayuntamiento de Valencia, el Instituto de Física Corpuscular, la Real Sociedad Española de Física, la Unidad de Cultura Científica y de la Innovación de la Universitat de València, la Delegación para la Incorporación a la UV, la ETSE, el Grupo de Trabajo de Física Arquímedes, el grupo ScienceFlows, y entidades externas como Caixa Popular, APTCV y Analog Devices.
The recording of the Fira Experimenta is available on the YouTube channel
