On December 15, school teams, which took part in the Moscow IT marathon and the sixth Explore the Internet & Govern It! online Russian championship, went on a tour of the science city of Troitsk. The tour, which is now a traditional New Year present for the best Moscow IT marathon runners, was organized by the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ.
The tour began at the Physical Wonder Room interactive museum, where school students took part in a game explaining the nature of various physical phenomena. Children were able to launch an “anti-gravity” spinning top suspended in a magnetic field, to test the law of momentum conservation by spinning on a special chair, to climb into a camera obscura to project the object in front of it on a diffusion sheet, to sit on a spiky chair, and play a role of a battery cell.
After the lunch break at the Physics Cafe, the event continued at the Technospark Nanotechnology Center, which is a platform to launch and develop new technology startups and also a multi-faceted complex to design and produce things for a number of innovative economic sectors.
The school students were given a tour around all buildings of the nanocenters (there already are four of them, with total area of 8,500 square meters). They visited 30 industrial labs working on growing diamonds, genetic research, bioengineering, industrial design, 3D-printing, medicinal and “combat” lasers and many other contemporary fields of science.
The school students also took part in a physical and chemical “investigation” and transformed into “X-men” for a time.
“Last year, we changed the format of the Coordination Center’s New Year receptions. Now, on the eve of the winter school holiday, we hold an event for the most active participants of our educational and social projects. Last year, it was a screening with ice cream and this year it is a tour and a science show. It has become a good tradition and we are going to develop it,” said Director of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ Andrey Vorobyev.
The tour concluded with tea and Coordination Center souvenirs.
