UB researchers take part in YoMo Barcelona once more
From February 26 to March 2, the University of Barcelona takes part for the third year in a row in the Festival YoMo Barcelona, organizing several workshops. One of the stands in the event is coordinated by the Scientific Culture and Innovation Unit (UCC+i) of the Communication Unit, which will carry out five different workshops.
YoMo, framed within the Mobile World Congress, is a fest joining science and technology for youngsters. It aims to bring the classroom training to real life, showing exciting professional careers which are available in the mobile ecosystem and STEAM sector.
From February 26 to March 2, the University of Barcelona takes part for the third year in a row in the Festival YoMo Barcelona, organizing several workshops. One of the stands in the event is coordinated by the Scientific Culture and Innovation Unit (UCC+i) of the Communication Unit, which will carry out five different workshops.
YoMo, framed within the Mobile World Congress, is a fest joining science and technology for youngsters. It aims to bring the classroom training to real life, showing exciting professional careers which are available in the mobile ecosystem and STEAM sector.
UCC+i schedules five workshops
On Tuesday, February 26, the activity Keep calm and materialize yourself will take place. It is promoted by researchers from the Department of Material Sciences and Physical Chemistry of the Faculty of Chemistry, and it is an interactive workshop-circuit in which participants go through some of the most relevant periods of materials engineering: they explore the field of sustainable material development to create an environmentally friendly future; they work on construction sustainable materials with their own hands and analyse some of the most surprising features of materials and their superpowers, from superconductivity to superhydrophobia. They will understand why these are used in real applications. The last phase is focused on new methods of material construction, such as 3D printing, in ceramics and polymers.
On February 27, there will be two activities in the UCC+i stand. First, the researchers of the Department of Quantum Physics and Astrophysics (Faculty of Physics and Institute of Cosmos Sciences) will offer the workshop Simulacions de mecànica quàntica (simulations of quantum mechanics), which will be available in the stand of Quantum Technologies with Ultracold Atoms stand during the rest of the days. This workshop wants to show some of the most relevant phenomena of quantum mechanics, taking as example the current research conducted in laboratories for ultracold gases. Attendants can make simulations of several experiments which show the quantum properties of the materials -with the computer.
Also, they can participate in the workshop De la realitat virtual al mon real (From virtual reality to the real world), from the Faculty of Psychology, which, through virtual reality, intends to generate the same physical, psychological, emotional and behavioural reactions that occur in real stimuli. The aim of this activity is to tell attendants about the application of this technology in the field of research, and specifically, how to generate responses of physical and psychological discomfort someone goes through when facing certain virtual stimuli to understand and treat this aspect of his/her life and improve their quality of life.
On Thursday, February 28, the Research Group FEHM, from the Department of Ecology, is organizing the activity Lʼapp RiuNeT: ciència ciutadana i conscienciació de lʼestat dels nostres rius (RiuNet App: citizen science and awareness on the state of our rivers), which invited attendants to enter a water ecosystem and know about the state of a river. After the observations on the environment and the organisms that live in the river, we can determine its hydrological state (the water running in the river compared to the water that should be running) and ecological quality (quality of water according to the organisms that live in the river). It looks a bit complicated but the RiuNet App tells us how to do so and we can apply this to any river. The stand also shows which macroinvertebrates live in rivers, how these are and which their traits are. Some of them can be seen live and can be identified through the app.
On Friday March 1, the Research Group GAMA, from the Faculty of Physics will organize the workshop Endinsaʼt en el món de les inundacions, in which the attendants can discover the effects of floods through a visual journey on recent and historical episodes. Among others, they will explore geographically the effects caused by floods through a Floodup-related interactive light fixture and will experiment with water in a simulation demo of a floodplain.
The invisible world of nanotechnology, in YoMo
The project NanoEduca will be present in YoMo with the workshop Els grafits al nanomón, in the GSMA stand, from February 26 to March 2, as part of the program mSchools. When asked whether we can get surfaces which are impossible to paint on -and therefore, work for a cleaner urban space-, students will see that a material that rejects water is hard to paint on, and will understand what hydrophobicity is and will analyse several materials. This project shows the new view offered by nanoscience on such a daily phenomenon.
Also, the coordinator of NanoDivulga UB, Jordi Díaz, will give the lecture “Vols conèixer el món invisible de la nanotecnologia? És un món on res és el que sembla i on existeixen materials extraordinaris!” (Thursday 28 at 2.30 p.m.). On Thursday 28, from 6.30 p.m. to 8 p.m., Díaz will offer a teacher training in the Teacher Track.