"Eureka! Fest"

In Novosibirsk, on September 17–20, the Eureka! Fest science festival was held, organized by the Novosibirsk State University and the Akademgorodok public fund. The main topics of the festival are evolution and light, scientific communications, the formation of the future, technical creativity and inventions. Given the rich spectrum of basic topics and freedom of formats, any interested could find the event to his taste: scientific lectures, discussions, scientific and environmental cinema, scientific battles, exhibitions, walking in the autumn forest, conference and numerous master classes.

In four days, the organizers managed to hold about 60 events. According to the most modest calculations, the festival was visited by more than 5 thousand people. Alexander Dubynin, director of the festival, considers this a great success:

“Last year, we had 3-4 lectures with a house in the audiences, and this year there were 80%of such lectures. And then lectures were a little less successful either in an uncomfortable time or in an uncomfortable place, ”Alexander explains. According to many experts and spectators, the secret of success is unusually simple - the highest level and professionalism of speakers! “There were a lot of top experts for Russia,” says Yegor Zeroeev. “They collected the star composition of lecturers without exaggeration. I’m even in some confusion, whom you will call next year - a rather high bar has been set, ”writes Strixaliko user in his review. “It was a shame that I could not be in two lectures at the same time.”

It is the fact of conducting interesting lectures at the same time - both in the large physical audience of NSU and in the FMSh hall - many viewers note as the main minus of the festival ... However, the organizers console: all lectures will soon appear on the NSU Life on YouTube.

Of course, it was not easy to please the listeners and with the complexity of lectures. The performance of Boris Stern in some caused delight with his high level, interesting data, structuredness, while others had complaints about too complicated material. “Literally five minutes later, I already realized that the brain ceases to perceive information. It is clear that the lecturer knows a lot and is well versed in what he was talking about, but he did not meet us and try to somehow alleviate the information, ”says Semyon, a student of the 11th grade. “It can be seen that the brain sitting in the audience creak. But, I think, this is useful for everyone, but especially for children, ”says Gayane, who has come to a lecture with his nine -year -old son. Suddenly, for the organizers, very contradictory reviews were also on the lecture of Alexander Panchin “Protection from Dark Arts: mistakes of perception, thinking and experiments”. If the majority showered a lecture with compliments and regretted that they did not call friends and acquaintances, then the FMSH educators shared bewilderment: “We led children to listen to recent studies, but came to the next lecture on pseudoscience, which repeats many similar ones. It is much more useful to build your message on positive information, and not on denial ... ”But Elena Nikolaevna, a teacher of gymnasium No. 3 of Akademgorodok, does not agree with her colleagues:“ On TV - many programs like “Battle of psychics”, about the magical memory of water, etc. Moreover, the parents of many of my students believe in this. Often it is very difficult for them to distinguish real science from pseudo -scientific nonsense. And such lectures with examples, with an explanation of what exactly the catch is from a scientific point of view, with statistical calculations are very useful! I am glad that I found the opportunity to come here with the class. ”

Of course, “Eureka! Fest” and without traditional festivals of the science of discussion for all festivals did not do. The Novosibirsk residents and guests of the city were invited to post and ask questions to experts on the panel discussion “XXI century: the era of education or obscurantism?” (Experts: Boris Stern, astrophysicist, writer and scientific journalist; Alexander Pankchin, specialist in the field of bioengineering and bioinformatics, scientific journalist, blogger; Alexey Torgashov, scientific journalist, deputy chief editor of the journal Schrödinger; Sergey Filippov, head of the POOIP Rosnano, and Evgeny Palchikov, specialist professor, specialist, specialist, specialist, specialist, specialist, specialist. in the field of fast -promoting processes) and “Evolution before and now” (experts: Pavel Borodin, Dot. Biol. Sciences, profiles of cytology and genetics of Feng NSU; Fedor Kondrashov, PhD, expert in evolutionary genomics, Jeanne Reznikov, professor of NSU, one of the leading specialists in the world of collective behavior and language of the Muravies; Alexander Sokolov, Alexander Sokolov, Alexander Sokolov, Alexander Sokolov, Alexander Sokolov, scientific journalist, university teacher, creator and editor of Anthropogenesis.ru;

The most successful, according to experts and spectators, was a discussion about evolution. True, experts themselves believe that they almost did not discuss the directly declared topic. But the audience was able to get professional answers to very common questions. For example, one of the spectators asked if the human generation spoil the lives of people with genetic diseases.

“I do not think that the salvation of such people will have a significant impact on the entire process of the physiological evolution of mankind. However, we can lose a lot in the sense of moral evolution, the evolution of humanity, if we decide by this principle what child to live and which is not, ”said Evgenia Timonova.

The discussion of obscurantism in the scientific center was expected to be very violent: which scientist refuses to discuss the results of polls, according to which only 32% of respondents understand that the work of the laser is associated with focusing light, and not sound waves, only 33% believe that antibiotics kill only bacteria, and not the same, they know about the existence of genes in any, not only any, not only genetically modified plants. Perhaps, under the influence of the audience, most experts took a soothing tone, trying to convince the audience that everything was by no means as bad as it might seem to specialists. Boris Stern noted that we do not need to strive for universal scientific literacy. There are enough 20% well -educated people in society so that the remaining 80% believe them. Alexey Torgashov said that, despite the abundance of false scientists, there are pleasant trends: “A year or two ago I watched the dynamics: do people believe in the origin of a person from a monkey? She showed that this percentage is increasing: now, who answered positively more than 10 years ago, and 10 years ago it was more than 20 years ago. ” To which Alexander Pankchin noted: the fact that some of the people do not believe in our common ancestor’s monkeys is not terrible. Another thing is when such problems arise in high -ranking people who make decisions at the level of states ...

Discussing the problems of education, the audience could not help but raise the topic of the church. Alexei Torgashov cited interesting data: according to recent research, of the two main institutional authorities of our society (RAS and the Russian Orthodox Church), the level of trust in the wounds is still higher, albeit only by 1%.

This year, the organizers managed to pay considerable attention to the video format. Within the framework of Eureka! Fest, science-science video blogs, films were discussed. The festival of relevant scientific cinema “Fank” and the ecological cinema “Eco -Charity” provided their tapes.

“I must admit that many who come were tuned in a swift scientific scientific scientist,” says Elena Dubynina, who oversaw the show of environmental films in the Kaleidoscope youth center. - And they fell on a leisurely, very thoughtful movie that considers the problem from all sides. This is unusual for the modern viewer. But this is what attracts. In addition, these are really very high -quality films. For example, after a fragment about the work of a group of Vavilov with seeds during the war, almost everyone in the hall wiped the tears ... After watching most films, teachers who would like to show such a movie to their students. ”

But still, the most vivid events of the festival were the “territory of the discoveries” and “path of the ancestors”. The “Discovery Territory” has become a sort of analogue of the Since Picnic for a rainy autumn day. In the Akademgorodok technopark, those who are interested in experiments and scientific shows, master classes and children's educational centers could enjoy the whole variety of format. From the scene of the youngest fans of science, “Fun Science” and the Center “Park of Miracles Galileo” were pleased, the Fizhafak NSU surprised the assembled experiments with electricity and light. Young inventors built bridges and towers from Spaghetti (the winners bridge, it should be noted, withstood the load of 13.5 kg!). ICIG SB RAS offered a master class "Gathering with an embryologist." The station of young naturalists immersed in the world of biological and geological discoveries. Robots, a bioconstructor, Trizov’s tasks, online courses, a quest for knowledge of Akademgorodok, his institutions and nature-here any child and an adult will believe that science is insanely exciting. For teachers and parents, a separate event was in parallel-the educational conference "How to study and teach in the 21st century." Which, in turn, also caused some discontent of teachers who would like to wander around the “territory of discoveries” with their children, and especially look at their speeches in various competitions.

Nevertheless, the organizers managed to almost impossible - to gather a variety of specialists (only in the first, three -hour part of them were about a dozen), give them the opportunity to tell them, and all listeners speak and ask questions. Moreover, among the speakers were not only teachers, psychologists, methodologists, creators of online courses, but also scientists. For example, Pavel Borodin told teachers about civil science projects. Teachers assured that they took a lot of Internet resources from his performance, on which they and children would be able to help scientists in routine work or collection of information.

The second part of the conference was devoted to the problems of engineering classes.

“Personnel hunger is an acute problem of the Russian Federation, therefore this year a separate session was given to this issue,” says Alla Goncharova, curator of the educational conference. - But I would note that a dialogue between the authorities, teachers of engineering classes, curators from schools and customers who are already needed by qualified personnel took place. This part was conducted not just in the form of reports, but in the format of polylogs, discussions in which accents were placed and the opinions of the parties on acute topics were discussed. Who does the country need? What educational projects to invest in? What to focus on the choice of a candidate for an engineering position? Is there enough engineering knowledge to form a successful professional? ”

The “path of the ancestors” became the find of the Novosibirsk organizers of the festival this year. Everyone had the opportunity to go through the path of evolution along the forest paths in the opposite direction with excellent speakers and specialists, such as Alexander Dubynin (led the “Plant path”), Pavel Borodin (“Mammal Path”), Alexander Sokolov (“Human Path”), Mikhail Sergeyev (“Invertebrate path”). The paths intersected, the groups of “people”, “mammals”, “birds”, “reptiles”, “invertebrates” and “plants” were met. By the end of the tour, all the groups, gathered, came to the primary ocean, whose role was played by the Ob reservoir. Participants in the evolutionary walk hope that the path of the ancestors will become a tradition. And the organizers even admitted that the next year they want to turn a walk into a real carnival (everyone who wants to go along the paths should come in appropriate costumes).

“Eureka! Fest” did not do without the traditional Sins-Slama for scientific festivals. The victory was confidently won by Olga, Kand. Biol. Sciences, Researcher at the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology. The audience especially liked that her ten-minute story about the opening of the Suur chromatin protein, which affects the time of replication, is illustrated by its own comics.

These are far from all the events of the festival: there were also exhibitions, a meeting in the scientific cafe “Eureka”, drawing and paper lessons from animal artists and those who are engaged in a botanical pattern. The organizers really hope that the next year they will be able to raise the bar even higher and make Eureka! Fest more interesting. We will wait for the next September.

Photo s . Kovaleva