Let’s renew the fun!

In this laboratory, small experiments on energy and renewables will be proposed and carried out with the help of the children to raise awareness of this crucial issue of our time and of renewables as sustainable energy sources. In the meantime, the older ones and adults will compete in a quiz with prizes to check “how much they know” about “energy and renewables”.

Experiment 1: Power from water. In this experiment, the kids will experience how to get energy from water. A water wheel pushed by a gentle jet of water produces enough mechanical energy to lift small objects tied to the end of a string.

Experiment 2: Wind-turbine-anemometer. Kids will experience how to build an anemometer to measure wind speed.

Experiment 3: Crookes radiometer. Kids will experience how to build a Crookes radiometer. With a jar in which a reel will be inserted, capable of turning at very low friction. The reel has the peculiarity of having the faces of the blades of different colors: one silver and the other matt black. By creating a vacuum in the jar and illuminating the radiometer, the reel will start to rotate due to the different heating due to the gas molecules hitting the opaque black surfaces compared to that of the reflective surfaces.

Experiment 4: Spinning snake. Children will experience how hot convective currents produced by heating from candles can set in motion and spin a spiral (the snake)

Experiment 5: Lemon stack. The students will build a battery with the aid of a galvanized nail (anode) and a five-cent coin (cathode), they will connect the copper cables to the electrodes and to the poles of a light bulb which, because of the passage of electric current, will illuminate.

PARTECIPANTI:  Rosalba Passalacqua, Georgia Papanikolaou, Paola Lanzafame, Salvatore Abate.