Outreach to high school students
The University Jaume I of Castellón regularly organizes career orientation sessions for high school students called “Connecta amb la ciència”,which publicises the opportunities for study and training offered by the university in scientific disciplines. The GOC (Group of Optics Castellón) Young Minds section joined this effort and visited several high schools in order to explain everyday phenomena of nature related to light.
Taking advantage of the event organized by the university, the GOC YM section visited 5 different villages in the province of Castellón, conducting workshops in which high school students learned by having fun.
The same courses were offered to the 5 high schools that were visited. The 6 active Young Minds members were organized into 3 groups of two members each. Stations with different experiments were set up in a classroom, allowing the students to circulate among them.
Each class of students (from 20 to 30 people) received an overview of the activities organised by GOC. Once the class was split into 3 groups, each group attended the 3 workshops which each lasted for 20 minutes. At each high school, from 3 to 4 classes attended, reaching around 100 students per school.
In the first workshop, they learnt about refraction, reflection and polarization. The second workshop was about kinematics, human vision and electromagnetic waves. Finally, the third workshop was about light absorption and diffraction.
The workshops used hands on, interactive experiments and the students received answers to the interesting questions they made. Surely, for some of them, this was the beginning of their scientific career.
More information can be found on the website of the GOC.
