Students from IES Zaidín Vergeles, closer to holding the key to a Sun on Earth
The XXIII Solar Week organised by the IES Zaidín Vergeles Secondary School in Granada was attended by Claudio Torregrosa and Iván Podadera, engineers at IFMIF-DONES, who brought the project closer to students in the final year of high school, and in the first and second years of Upper Secondary School, with a didactic talk entitled “IFMIF-DONES: The Key to a Sun on Earth”.
The audience, around 100, showed great interest throughout the presentation, which started with an introductory video of the project. Afterwards, members of the IFMIF-DONES team explained the objectives of nuclear fusion, which is the scope of the project; and they later explained the functioning of the main elements of the facility to be built in the municipality of Escúzar.
As it is usual in the dissemination activities promoted by the educational centres of Granada, a few minutes were devoted to explaining what the project brings and will bring to the province in terms of knowledge and scientific development, as well as in terms of employment potential. “You could be working with us in the future”, the disseminators commented.
As a practical backup, the participants were shown one of the samples that could be tested at the facility. The meeting ended with a question-and-answer session in which both students and teachers raised their doubts related to the technical and organisational aspects of the project, as well as about fusion energy in general.
The Solar Week XXIII at IES Zaidín Vergeles took place during the last week of April, with the participation of prominent speakers from the University of Granada, the CSIC and other institutions. An enjoyable way of approaching science, and which will most likely be the seed of the next generation of scientists in the area.
The IFMIF-DONES team would like to thank the teaching staff of the centre for their involvement in this outreach project, especially Salvador Molina and Antonio Quesada, organisers of the event.
