On 28 and 29 September, Researchers’ Night took place at TalTech, bringing together hundreds of people to listen to lectures, look around, and do some DIY.
On Friday, a rare sight could be seen in front of the main building of TalTech at Mustamäe. Two little girls dressed in pink jackets were going to the event on balance bikes. They still have a lot of growing up to do before getting a real bicycle. They wanted to attend the ‘Let’s Make Thunder and Lighting’ workshop, where both were indeed made in the course of an hour and a half.
Thunder and lightning were no strangers to a boy going to another workshop, who had visited TalTech once before – when preparing for the song celebration in the summer. The celebration went well. ‘I managed to stay dry,’ he stated. As we all remember, it was raining cats and dogs, so in addition to tears in our eyes, we also got our feet wet. When watching the events of the song celebration on a screen, he saw a lightning bolt hit the ground nearby.
The Researchers’ Night brought together many different stories – 1,071 people registered for or participated in the event. In addition to young future trailblazers, the event also attracted inquisitive adults.
‘You can see and experience so much here that I wish we had more of such events!’ stated a gentleman who was at a loss about which workshop to attend. He was unfolding a piece of paper where he had written down the events he was interested in. ‘I simply cannot choose...’
There was plenty to choose from – about sixty different events took place at colleges and the Mustamäe campus. You could look at angry molecules and have coffee with scientists, look at solar cells and light-emitting diodes, study light, and above all, understand the whats and whys of researchers.
At the ice cream workshop, the frozen delight was made with nitrogen. Children understood immediately that they were basically making their favourite ice cream – MiniMelts.
The workshop was so popular that not all could participate. One mother was instead offered the option to build a camera obscura, i.e. the predecessor of cameras, with her child. She recoiled – her daughter did not like physics and she was not sure why we should study it in the first place. However, is this not the right place for making sense of physics?
After the workshop, they exclaimed, ‘We did not know that physics could be so cool!’
Events also took place in Tartu, Kuressaare, and Kohtla-Järve. In the latter, the Researchers’ Night has already taken place twelve years in a row. Anna Kaljusaar, who managed the events in Kohtla-Järve, said, ‘We now have word-of-mouth advertising.’
After all, science is not something that lives somewhere else. It is all around us and intrinsic to the world as much as the world is intrinsic to the science. We would like to thank all participants! See you again next year!