On 9 September the Russian national event «Children Are Our Future», which is run in more than 20 Russian cities, was held in Dubna for the first time. The Joint Institute for Nuclear Research presented its interactive pavilion, “Club of future scientists”, and also appeared on stage with physics and chemistry experiments and a lecture. The festival was organized by the Telecom MPK company in association with the town Administration. The primary objective of these festivities was to popularise education, to introduce first-year students to potential careers and to increase the level of interest to new technologies.

JINR was represented by the following staff members: Mark Shirchenko (Dzhelepov Laboratory of Nuclear Problems), Dmitry Dryablov, Oleg Kunchenko, Alexander Kuznetsov (all three from the Veksler and Baldin Laboratory of High Energy Physics) and Kirill Kozubsky (Museum of History of Science and Technology of JINR).

Children who attended the event had the opportunity to try their hand as experimentalists and explore different phenomena of the world around them. Those who were especially enthusiastic received special tokens which they could use as a payment for the park attractions. The JINR activists also awarded various souvenirs to young participants as well as involved adults.

The JINR staff members presented spectacular and enlightening experiments with liquid nitrogen (levitation – the Meisner effect, explosions – extreme misting, the effect of low temperatures on different materials, the Leidenfrost effect, an experiment using the ideal gas law), other chemistry experiments (“the volcano”, “the spontaneous combustion”, “the Pharaoh’s snake” etc.), experiments connected with stable equilibrium, the centre of gravity and air pressure, and small lightning bolts produced with a Van de Graaff generator, etc.

Dmitry Dryablov,
Photos by Adelina Kazakova

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