Science once again stepped out of the laboratory to connect with the public during a new edition of Pint of Science in Vigo, featuring the participation of CINTECX researchers María Pazo and Patricia González Cabaleiro, who brought research closer to the public in a friendly, participatory, and relaxed atmosphere.
For the first time, the festival included the initiative Pint Kids: Ciencia Miúda, a proposal specifically designed for children. In this context, María Pazo succeeded in capturing the attention of the youngest attendees at Café de Catro a Catro with the talk “What Is Hidden in Water? Acidity and Other Mysteries”, a session that was as educational as it was entertaining, where science was explained through colorful and visual experiments.
During the activity, the children learned how to measure pH using a color scale and were able to observe the level of acidity or alkalinity in everyday products and foods such as lemon, vinegar, shower gel, and soft drinks, answering the key question: acidic or basic?. In addition, the researcher explained in a very visual way concepts such as the solubility of certain minerals in water depending on its pH and how highly acidic elements can affect the corrosion of certain materials.
The talk also served to convey a fundamental message: water is much more than what comes out of the tap or falls from the sky. Through simple examples, María Pazo explained that air and soil pollution inevitably end up reaching rivers and seas, and that, in order to protect human health and ecosystems, scientists analyze water looking for “clues” such as its acidity or the presence of harmful bacteria. With this, the group of young participants embraced their mission as researchers: to examine samples and discover how to help keep the water cycle clean.
Buildings Under the Light of Science
In the following session, aimed at the general public, Patricia González Cabaleiro took part with the workshop “Buildings Under the Light of Science”, where she showed how engineering and new 3D capture technologies, such as LiDAR, make it possible to analyze structures that may appear motionless, but are actually constantly exposed to the passage of time, climate conditions, and their surrounding environment.
During the talk, the audience discovered that buildings continuously “struggle” against invisible forces such as their own weight, wind, rain, and ground behavior. Through clear examples, the researcher explained which factors must be taken into account for a structure to remain standing and how scientific research makes it possible to “see what cannot be seen” by capturing buildings in 3D, analyzing their behavior, and learning how to care for their life cycle.
