Young researchers for a day at Sissa in Trieste

(ANSA) – TRIESTE, MARCH 19 – How can you find out what’s inside a sealed box that can’t be opened? Does it make sense to try to develop scientific solutions that would allow us to create colonies on Mars or live forever? Tomorrow the children of a sixth grade school in Trieste will try their hand at these and other questions at Sissa University, the International School of Advanced Studies, on the occasion of the first national University Day, an event promoted by the Conference of Italian Rectors (Crui). “Universities revealed” is the name indicated for the event in which around 70 universities throughout Italy have participated. Sissa has chosen to celebrate the day by proposing a special edition of ‘Sissa for Schools’, the program of visits dedicated to the schools of the Sissa Medialab which for more than 10 years has brought hundreds of children and young people from primary, middle and high school every Thursday to visit the University to show them what it means to do scientific research. Tomorrow the kids will start the day trying to discover which object is contained in a sealed box: they will formulate hypotheses and discuss in groups what experiments they could undertake to confirm them. An activity that simulates the way in which scientists operate and which will introduce the interactive seminar “But what do we have in mind?”, in which Marco Zanon, laboratory technician who assists the cognitive neuroscience groups of Sissa, will explain how magnetic resonance allows to study our brain, which is also contained in a ‘box’ that cannot be opened. A debate will then follow to reflect on the relationship between science and society in which the children will think about the scope of some lines of research that actually exist such as, for example, the attempts to colonize Mars or the fight against ageing. Students will be asked to take a position on the question: is it desirable for society to obtain the fruits of this type of research? (HANDLE).