Nutrition, main topic for the third episode of Animated Science series

La UB Divulga  has just released the third episode of its animation series Animated Science.
La UB Divulga has just released the third episode of its animation series Animated Science.
Research
(16/01/2017)

La UB Divulga  has just released the third episode of its animation series Animated Science, a project aiming to create an audio-visual scientific resource library, organized in auto-conclusive films, which talk about scientific concepts in a visual and dynamic way, aimed at children. In this episode, entitled Nutrition, the main topic is food and the importance of eating a balanced diet.

La UB Divulga  has just released the third episode of its animation series Animated Science.
La UB Divulga has just released the third episode of its animation series Animated Science.
Research
16/01/2017

La UB Divulga  has just released the third episode of its animation series Animated Science, a project aiming to create an audio-visual scientific resource library, organized in auto-conclusive films, which talk about scientific concepts in a visual and dynamic way, aimed at children. In this episode, entitled Nutrition, the main topic is food and the importance of eating a balanced diet.

One day, bad eating habits make an appearance in the body of the character of the story, who, after visiting the doctor, understands he has to take care of what he eats and should eat a balanced diet to feel better. The episode, made in 2016, International Year of Pulses, ends with a summary of the main stages of the cultivation of legumes.

This work has been supervised by the scientist Claudi Mans, emeritus professor of Chemical Engineering of the University of Barcelona, who validated the whole process to guarantee the proper transformation from its content into visual language.

The collection

The different episodes for Animated Science result from the definition of a selected key concept by the experts of the UB who take part in this project. Out of this idea, a guideline and visual treatment are set up. Then, the guideline is drawn, animated, given sound and adapted to the three languages of this project (Catalan, Spanish and English).  The diffusion of these works is done through the reproduction list of La UB Divulga at the UB Youtube channel and through the site of the project, where all episodes will be uploaded.

The scientific method

The first episode treats the scientific method with examples for each phase composing it. The main character sees the phenomenon to be analyzed, which in this case is the growth of a plant. He has to find out which factors make a plant grow more. This character develops a starting hypothesis and, together with the other characters, they create an experiment to prove it. The scientific advisor for this episode was Claudi Mans, emeritus professor of Chemical Engineering.

Shades

This second episode, entitled Shades, talks about how the position of the sun affects shades. The main character wants to paint a picture at the garden in the morning. When work is half done, he gets a phone call that takes quite a bit. Later, when he comes back to his painting, he realizes the shadows he had painted are in the wrong position. The character, shocked, thinks and understands that the time of the day affects the position of the sun, and this is what defines the direction of shades, projected by objects. The scientific advisors for this episode were Santiago Vallmitjana and Estela Martín, professors at the Department of Applied Physics and Optics.



 

The project Animated Science is organized by the Scientific Culture and Innovation Unit (UCC+i) of the Communication Area of the University of Barcelona, with the support of the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) - Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness.