Research Fellows
Ilias Vasilopoulos
Early Stage Researcher 11 at Rolls-Royce Deutschland
Summary
The outreach activity took place on January 8th, 2018 at the primary school Xrysostomos (part of Lycée Léonin) in Nea Smyrni, Greece, in collaboration with Pavlos Alexias (ESR 4). It was held four times, once for each class of the 6th grade of the primary school (120 students at the age of 12 years old), by replacing the scheduled Physics course. The activity was conducted in terms of an interactive presentation titled "Fluid Mechanics and Simulation", which intended to explain and simplify some basic concepts of fluid mechanics, present in our everyday life. This was successfully achieved by including a lot of interactive experiments and videos.
Description
Each slide of the presentation started with a question in order to attract the students attention. The answers were either given by them or revealed to them after discussion and using colorful pictures as examples. The first questions were related to "What we define as fluid?" and "Why it is important to study them? Any known applications?". Then, emphasis was given at the basic fluid properties and the correlation between velocity and pressure of a fluid was explained using simple balloon experiments and a Pythagorean cup. The experiments took place between the slides, aiming to recapture the students attention.
The presentation continued with a bit more advanced concepts, such as "How do airplanes fly?", "How is lift generated?", "How does the rotation of a body affect the aerodynamic forces?". Answers were given to all these questions using simplified terminology and a live demonstration followed, where a carton-made aerofoil was lifted by air blown from a hair dryer. The activity was concluded by explaining the concept of simulation and its advantages and disadvantages when compared to experiments. A lot of videos were used to help the students understand this topic. Finally, the importance of research was discussed.
Outcome
The feedback received from the students was very positive. Most of them were interested on the topic and really curious to learn, while asking questions and participating with joy in all the experiments. It was rather unexpected that some of them were willing to spend their break in order to keep the discussion going. Last but not least, we were surprised several times by the quality of some questions and the level of knowledge in such a technical field. We are confident that the activity was successful and had an impact on most of the students.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the school director Despoina Tsaousi for embracing our idea and offering the valuable time and equipment of the school, as well as the Physics teacher Alkinoos Mpellos for his support and arranging all the details. Finally, we acknowledge the young teacher Konstantina Karapati for her feedback regarding the quality of the presentation and her help during the activity.