October 29 — 31, 2018 the Regional Intellectual Marathon on Oceanology "Sea of Knowledge" was held for the third time at Marine Hydrophysical Institute. This is one of the largest popular science projects in Sevastopol, held under the brand name of the All-Russian Science Festival "NAUKA 0+". The marathon is dedicated to the International Black Sea Day and is aimed at attracting the attention of schoolchildren to the profession of a scientist and to such an interesting science as oceanology. The program of the project "Sea of Knowledge — 2018" was rich and varied. It included an intellectual competition consisting of qualifying games and a super-game, the creative competition "Let's Save Our Sea", popular science lectures, meetings with scientists, excursions, exhibitions, science shows and collective watching of popular science films.
13 school teams took part in the qualifying games of the marathon, which took place on October 29. Each consisted of five participants –7–9 class pupils. Schoolchildren with great enthusiasm fought for reaching the finals, solving difficult tasks of 5 different-format contests. The teams prepared for the games for several weeks, relying on sources recommended by the project organizers. Tasks included questions of the format "What? Where? When? " "Where is the logic", "Cheat", "What has changed on the map?" photo questions developed by a team of employees of two research institutes — MHI and IMBR.
After each qualifying round, schoolchildren were given the opportunity to make a short trip to the "World of Science" — the so-called interactive exhibition located in the lobby near the conference hall. Incredibly fascinating exposition brought together a variety of exhibits – from small sea parasites, which could be viewed only with a microscope, to computer models and robots. The exhibition was attended by employees of several departments of Marine Hydrophysical Institute (Optics and Sea Biophysics Department, Turbulence Department, Shelf Hydrophysics Department, Biogeochemistry Department, Computational Technologies and Mathematical Modeling Department, Department of Remote Research Methods), a group of colleagues from the Institute of Marine Biological Research (Department Biotechnologies and Phytoresources, Environmental Parasitology Department, Aquaculture and marine Pharmacology Department), our partners from the Association of Underwater Activities of Crimea and Sevastopol, teachers and pupils of the Junior Academy of Sciences.
The highlight of the exhibition was the presentation of the board game "Open the Ocean", which was developed by young scientists of Marine Hydrophysical Institute. Visitors studied its rules with interest and tried to play it, picture by picture, discovering new knowledge about the ocean.
During the first day of the Marathon, the improvised cinema platform was not empty. It was especially popular before intellectual competitions, when schoolchildren were inspired and tuning in the right way by watching popular science films.
According to the results of the qualifying rounds, the seven most active and erudite teams reached the finals.
The second day of the Marathon was devoted to popular science lectures, which were attended with great interest by pupils of different ages – from 1st to 11th grade. Among the students, there were mainly participants of intellectual and creative competitions, their parents and teachers, graduate students and employees of the Institute.
The program of the day included 4 lectures from partner organizations of the Marathon:
After each lecture, students actively communicated with scientists, the authors of the most original questions were awarded with special prizes from the Festival of Science and project partners.
The final stage of the Marathon was held on October 31 - the International Black Sea Day. The holiday in scientific style was bright, dynamic, full of surprises.
An exciting final game has become an almost real journey through the sea of knowledge. It included not only difficult questions, but also completely unexpected tasks. The teams guessed the voices of marine animals, the sounds of the elements, composed words from huge letters worn on each player. Such tasks required maximum cohesion and ingenuity. All teams fought very worthily. With a small margin from the rivals, the winners of the Regional Intellectual Oceanography Marathon “Sea of Knowledge” became:
1st place — team "Orion", secondary school No.58; 2nd place — team "Magnificent Five", secondary school No.61; 3rd place — team "Physalia", secondary school No.4.
The most enchanting moment of the Marathon was a scientific show presented to the participants by the Laboratory of Scientific Miracles. A real scientist (or maybe a magician) Professor Electron magically captured the attention of marathoners and carried them into a fantastic space where lightning flashed and the atmosphere of a fairy tale reigned, but at the same time, everything was easily explained from the point of view of science...
The awarding ceremony of the participants and winners of the Marathon is a key event of the scientific holiday. It began with a demonstration of the best works of the creative contest "Let's take care of our sea". Young videographers, photographers and artists who sent their works to the competition were awarded personal diplomas, and the winners in addition to the diplomas received special gifts from the All-Russian Science Festival in the form of t-shirts and souvenirs, as well as free tickets to the Sevastopol Aquarium Museum.
Awarding of the winners of the intellectual contest took place in several stages. First, all the children were awarded with Marathon diplomas, T-shirts from the Science Festival and colorful souvenirs. All team members and their curators were given free tickets to the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory. The teams that took 1st and 2nd place were awarded free tickets to the Sevastopol Aquarium Museum.
A special prize in the form of the board game "Open Ocean" was awarded to the winners by its developers, young scientists of Marine Hydrophysical Institute Andrey Bagaev and Elena Kubryakova.
The organizers of the project decided to award souvenir gifts from the Science Festival to young correspondents — pupils of the youth media studio of the Junior Academy of Sciences of Sevastopol "CLASS-TV!", who carefully filmed all the events of the Marathon and made many publications on this project on social media.
