Students from IES Padre Manjón had the opportunity to get to know the future particle accelerator of IFMIF-DONES from the inside. The event took place last May and was organised by the mathematics teaching staff of the school. The students of the International Baccalaureate and those of the 1st year of the scientific-technical course welcomed the visit of Jesús Garrido, Kornél Varga and Martin Rouret, all of them members of the Valeria laboratory and in charge of the development of virtual environments for IFMIF-DONES at the University of Granada.

Throughout an active session, the students learned about the great impact that the construction of IFMIF-DONES will have on the province of Granada, addressed their questions about this promising energy source and discussed the role of virtual reality in such a complex scientific infrastructure. In addition, the students were able to explore the accelerator system thanks to the virtual environments displayed on virtual reality glasses and observed how maintenance tasks will be carried out with remote manipulation at the infrastructure. Lastly, they were delighted to try out the different sensations caused by the haptic manipulators used to control the IFMIF-DONES equipment.

The students were enthusiastic about the possibility of using these new technologies and of getting close to such an important scientific infrastructure. For its part, the IFMIF-DONES team is thus strengthening the project’s outreach work in schools in the province of Granada. We are confident that all this work will have an impact, in the near future, on the promotion of scientific vocations for our university.