About 1,000 school students took part in SIBUR's 2021 Science Sessions

17 november 2021

SIBUR’s 2021 Science Sessions educational project reached out to eight cities and about a thousand school students from a number of Russia’s regions including Voronezh, Dzerzhinsk, Gubkinsky, Pyt-Yakh, Blagoveshchensk (Republic of Bashkortostan), and Nyagan. Science Sessions started off in May in Dzerzhinsk, whereas the closing events were held in Tomsk and Noyabrsk in November, with 280 children in attendance.

The project has been running for its sixth year as part of SIBUR's Formula for Good Deeds social investment program. The summer and the fall seasons of the Science Sessions focused on two areas: Inventive Engineering and Smart Technologies. Both programs seek to popularize mathematics and physics, develop engineering design skills and improve teachers' competences where it comes to helping channel schoolchildren’s intellectual pursuits. In developing these programs, their authors drew on unique educational breakthrough and state-of-the-art teaching practices.

Science Sessions’ emphasis is on hands-on experience. After being exposed to the core concepts of electronics and electricity, attendees of the Smart Technologies course went on to assemble "smart gadgets" under the tutelage of their experienced mentors including a galvanic battery, a perpetual flashlight, a portable loudspeaker, an alarm system, and a Tesla coil. Students enrolled in the Inventing Engineers program got to work with the Livetronic construction set developing custom-designed engineering models of an Asimov robot, a rubber motor car, a catapult, and a catamaran. The students were allowed to take home all their models and gadgets assembled at the class.

Because of the situation with the pandemic, classes were conducted remotely in a real-time format. Each participant got issued with a kit of materials and supplies for their practical assignments. Video recordings of the classes are available online to all attendee via a permanent link.

The summer and fall Science Sessions received a lot of positive reviews from teachers, participants and students’ parents:

I would like to thank the organizers and SIBUR for this series of useful and inspiring classes!  Galina Babikova of Tomsk commented. The main goal that my son and I had set before ourselves prior to attending these science sessions has been achieved: the boy got very much into technical sciences. I’d like to extend my thanks to the sessions’ teachers for their patience and the ease with which they presented to the children what seemed to be complicated material that required some specialized knowledge to understand.

My son handmade his very first portable speaker. And it works, to boot! This is an indication that he’s going to get progressively interested in designing and building various gadgets. I am definitely happy about this development because I would like his future career to be associated with the technology realm, Tomsk’s Andrei Dozmorov noted.

My child and I really enjoyed the Smart Technologies program. Plus, this is the second time that we are happily taking part in these science sessions, Noyabrsk’s Olga Rakhmatullina commented. I would like to thank SIBUR for such a wondrous opportunity! I would also like to express my special gratitude to Kseniya Zayets, the course’s developer and instructor, for the positive atmosphere at her classes and her ability to explain complicated physical phenomena to children and parents in a simple and easy-to-understand way.