Results of the SUSU «School of Scientific Magic»

On September 14, final lectures for school students of the city were held at South Ural State University.

During three days, Higher Schools and Institutes of the University were holding interactive lectures and engaging experiments for school students, based on popular books about Harry Potter. Students had the opportunity to make sure by their own experience that science is not only useful but also very interesting!

On the first day of the “School of Magic” operation students attended four informative lectures such as: Potions, Ancient Runes, Magical Nutrition and Dragon Search and Control Bureau. There students learned how to carry out an experiment with eruption of a volcano on the basis of chemical substances, studied the history of ancient runes, learned the role of fermented milk products in our life and determined the activities which can help developing one’s abilities and fighting laziness.

On the second and the third days of the “School of Scientific Magic” operation, students had the opportunity to attend such lectures as: Defense against the “Dark Forces”, Transfiguration, Magic of Word, The Secret of Chinese Characters and Magic of the Moment.

The lecture of Defense against the “Dark Forces” was held for students by the Institute of Law. There students were told how to make fingerprints correctly, how they can be observed under the microscope; students were also offered to make their own fingerprints as a keepsake.

“Me and the Director of the Criminalistics Laboratory Anatoliy Ordan consider criminals as ‘dark forces’. When committing a crime, they leave a lot of traces, and finding these traces is a real magic. For us, wizards are forensic scientists who use different type of powders, preparations, substances, methods and means which allow finding these traces, determine the criminal and catch him. This is what we are talking about today,” said deputy Director of the Institute of Law Alexey Minbaleev.

At the Polytechnic Institute’s venue for Transfiguration high school students learned about everything related with electricity. Students were undergoing a quest in which they needed to electrify a balloon and try to glue it to a wall, recognize objects in a box by-touch, and even pass the Zhukovsky bench. Also students of the Power Engineering Faculty told about what they are taught at the Faculty and organized a photoshoot.

School of Medical Biology prepared a venue called “Magic of Word” for future university applicants, where they learned negotiation, public speech-making and goal-setting. Petr Glukhov, a scientist of the Laboratory of Psychology and Psychophysiology of Stress-Resistance and Creativity, using examples told about how to specify goals and successfully achieve them.

“The event was held in order to interest school students with possibilities which become available for them at SUSU. At our venue we are talking about how to achieve success using the magic of word,” explained Petr Glukhov.

Venue of the Institute of Linguistics and International Communications was called “The Secret of Chinese Characters”, where school students along with students from China plunged into mysterious world f this ancient language. They played pronunciation games, through which they learned basic words and phrases.

“I think it was useful for the children because they developed their interest in Chinese language, and also because nowadays all the world is watching China,” said organizer of the venue, ILIC student Sofia Litvinenko.

At the venue of the Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities called “Magic of the Moment” students had the opportunity to learn about what is journalism from inside. They were given an opportunity to learn their field of interest: newspaper, radio, television or Internet, where at each of the venues they had to complete specific tasks.

At the “Television” venue students learned how to cite news properly, tried to work with mimic and gestures. By the task of the venue organizer, each student had to act as a TV host and record news in the real studio of SUSU-TV.

The “Social networks” venue was placed in a 360 degree newsroom, where students in a magic atmosphere created text for an Internet platform.

“Today at our venue ‘Social networks’, children were completely involved in the process of text construction. They were solving riddles where the answers formed a text – the post for social networks. Topics of the riddles were connected with magic and with journalism. By using such simple methods, we teach children how to write a text,” told us Master’s degree student of the Faculty of Journalism, Head of the 360 degree multimedia newsroom Arina Marfitsyna.

The “Newspaper” venue was placed in the editorial office of the Technopolis newspaper. There children learned about the university’s newspaper, competed in contests and became owners of a real magic brochure.

“We told high school students about our newspaper and gave them the latest issue of the Technopolis as a present. We organized a small contest where children checked their knowledge of Russian language. Also, we issued a special magic edition of the 'Daily Prophet'. The title for the edition we borrowed from the Harry Potter movie, and the topic of the edition became the ‘School of Scientific Magic’ at SUSU,” said correspondent of the Technopolis newspaper Nadezhda Yushina.

On the result of each lecture school students were given special stickers which they were sticking into their wizard passport. At the end of the day students were given memorable presents with the logo of SUSU.

Organizer of the event, deputy Vice-Rector for Academic Affairs Yulia Bolotina summed up the three-day “School of Scientific Magic” and shared perspectives for development of this project.

“250 school students of Chelyabinsk general education institutions – partners of our university - took part in the project. The children showed high interest, they liked attending scientific and informative lectures. We reached our goal: the children took a look on science from absolutely different point of view. What about perspective for development, as a start, our ‘School of Scientific Magic’ upon invitation of the Head of the Zlatoust City Administration will visit school students in their cities. The event is planned to be held in two days during autumn break. Also, we will surely use elements of the ‘School of Scientific Magic’ in the contest called ‘New Generation Chooses’ which we annually organize in October at the venue of the Palace of Pioneers and School Children named after N.K. Krupskaya. In the future we are planning on creating a massive program with content extractions from the ‘School of Scientific Magic’ in order to make science popular at a greater volume not only for children of the Chelyabinsk region, but also for the surrounding regions.”