The Science Museum of Valencia hosted this Sunday, April 2, in the morning the XVIII Physics and Technology Experiments and Demonstrations Experimenta Fair-Contest with more than 3,500 visitors. The event, organised by the Faculty of Physics of the University of Valencia (UV), has hosted 66 STEM projects, with more than 300 participants (50% women) and is a party that brings physics and technology closer to students from secondary education and the general public in a creative and participatory way.
In addition, at 1:30 p.m., the awards ceremony was held in the museum’s Santiago Grisolía auditorium, an event that was streamed on the museum’s YouTube channel, with more than 10,000 subscribers. The event was preceded by the short scientific show “Entre llums i camps”, by first-year Physics students, Elena Rodríguez and Pau Cirujeda, who are also members of the Photonets group. The Experimenta Fair-Contest has the collaboration of the Foundation for Science and Technology (FECyT) - Ministry of Science and Innovation, in addition to other entities and institutions.
The awarded projects in the XVIII Experimenta 2023 Fair-Competition were, in the Physics Experiments and Demonstrations category, that of IES Peset Aleixandre (Paterna), ‘Ai, que fonc!’ (in Compulsory Secondary Education, ESO) and that of the British School Alzira (‘Interferómetro de Michelson’), of Baccalaureate. In the Technological Applications category, the award-winning centres were the San José de la Montaña de Cheste School ((‘Les pastilles de la iaia (determinant analgèsics)’ in ESO, and the Enric Valor de Silla IES (‘Em tires una mà?’) in high school. The public vote prize went to the proposal “Més val aigua que força”, from the Mariano Serra School of Valencia, for ESO students.
Of the five awards, four are endowed with 300 euros, and the project most voted by the public with 200 euros, in addition to gifts for the teaching staff and for all the participating groups, which received 11 honourable mentions. The jury, made up of 30 university and secondary school teachers, assessed the good functioning, the correct understanding of the assignments and the clarity of the explanations.
At the institutional table that awarded the prizes and diplomas –co-chaired by Pilar Ezpeleta, director general of Universities and Ángeles Solanes, vice-rector of Permanent Training, Teaching Transformation and Employment of the UV–, there were Julio Monreal, deputy director of Institutional Relations and Promotion of the City of Arts and Sciences (CAC); Elena Pinilla, vice-president of the Spanish Royal Physics Society and member of the Physics Teaching and Dissemination Division; and Berta Rubio, vice director of the Institute of Corpuscular Physics (IFIC). Also members of the institutional board were Jordi Vidal, dean of the Faculty of Physics (UV); Sergi Serrano, president of the Association of Technology Teachers of the Valencian Community (APTCV) and Domingo Martínez, coordinator of one of the Jury groups and professor in the Applied Physics Department of the UV.
Vídeo at: https://www.uv.es/experimdocs/feria2023/video_spot_02-04-2023
Photo gallery of this event:: http://ir.uv.es/experimenta/fotos23
Experimenta website: http://www.uv.es/experimenta and http://go.uv.es/experimenta/fira23
Minutes of all the awarded projects here.
