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Group photo of Kids Day attendees (Photo: PCB).
 29.06.2018

Young scientists pack out the PCB at the 2nd Kids Day

This Friday the Barcelona Science Park (Parc Científic de Barcelona, PCB) has hosted its 2nd Kids Day, an event which makes science more accessible for its employees’ children aged 3 to 16. The festival brought together 46 boys and girls for a packed programme of fun activities which all had one thing in common: science.

 

The day began with a welcome from Barcelona Science Park Director ​​Maria Terrades followed by a play crammed with experiments and fun featuring doctors “Erlenmeyer” and “Test Tube”, played by Sergi Cantos from the Science Outreach Division and Dr Carlos Heras, a collaborator with the PCB’s Research in Society programme. At the same time the older children visited the Park’s Experimental Toxicology and Ecotoxicology Unit (UTOX).

The youngest kids toured the PCB’s facilities where they did lots of experiments. There has been a wide range of workshops this year: painting with milk and colourant, extracting DNA, making a rainbow in a tube by playing with densities, creating a substance which can behave as a liquid or solid, making slime, extracting two liquids which at first seemed impossible to separate, making a volcano from yeast and preparing cell samples and observing them through a microscope.

Meanwhile the older children took part in an Escape Room designed by the PCB’s Science Outreach Division to find the “formula” for a cancer vaccine which a researcher had managed to isolate but unfortunately died before she was able to publish her results. The contestants had only 60 minutes to find the last sample of the virus needed for the vaccine which might save humanity before the laboratory was dismantled. In the end and after extracting and sequencing DNA, counting cells and getting clues using ultraviolet light, they successfully passed the test.

Finally, recycling workshops were run where all the youngsters painted boxes made of EPS to turn them into stools. They also used this material to create string artworks by winding coloured threads around a set of nails to form geometric figures.

To round off the event, the children attending the 2nd Kids Day were given certificates to show that they are “Young Scientists”.