This Sunday 13th April, the Science Museum of Valencia will be hosting the 20th edition of the Experimenta Fair-Competition, the science and technology festival organised every year by the Faculty of Physics of the University of Valencia. The main aim of this event, which is free to attend, is to bring physics and technology closer to secondary school students and the general public in a creative and participative way. For children, the Fisicalàndia workshop will be active, a space where children can learn about some basic principles of physics through playful activities and simple experiments. The prize-giving ceremony will be held at 1:30 p.m. in the Santiago Grisolía auditorium of the Science Museum.
In this new edition of the Experimenta fair, which will open its doors at 10 am, some 300 people are expected to take part, including students and teachers. Sixty-six experimental projects will be presented in the competition, developed by students from ESO, Bachillerato and vocational training courses, and tutored by teachers from their schools. The public will be able to ask questions about the functioning and fundamentals of any of the experiments on display, while the jury – made up of university and secondary school teachers – will be evaluating the projects in real time.
The competition has two types of participation: physics demonstrations and experiments and technological applications projects. For each of these, there are in turn two categories depending on the participants’ level of studies. In total, the jury will award four prizes of €600 per winning group, and the project with the most votes from the audience will receive €400. Among the awards, gifts will also be given to teachers with winning projects and the Conselleria de Educación recognises this extraordinary dedication to their students as hours of scientific school research project.
Also new this year, there will be the Ampère-Blas Cabrera-Experimenta awards organised by the Ampère Museum/Friends of Ampère Society in Lyon (France) as part of the celebrations for the 250th anniversary of the birth of Andrè Marie Ampère, who made a fundamental contribution to electromagnetism. Any project on the themes of electricity and energy is eligible for one of these awards.
The Experimenta fair is a festive day celebrating scientific curiosity, teamwork and dissemination by young people. It has the collaboration of the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology of the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (FECYT-MICIUN), the Science Museum of Valencia, Valencia City Council, the Institute of Corpuscular Physics (IFIC, CSIC-UV) and the Spanish Royal Society of Physics, among others. Within the Universitat de València, in addition to the Faculty of Physics, the Delegation for University Incorporation, the Equality Unit, the Scientific Culture and Innovation Unit, and the Lifelong Learning Service are also collaborating.
