From October 29 to October 31, 2019 the Regional Intellectual Marathon in Oceanology “Sea of Knowledge” was held at the Marine Hydrophysical Institute for the fourth time. This is one of the main popular science projects in Sevastopol, which are held under the auspices of the All-Russian Science Festival “NAUKA 0+”. The marathon is dedicated to the International Day of the Black Sea. The goal of the project is to attract the attention of schoolchildren to such an interesting science as oceanology and to the profession of a scientist studying the ocean.
The program of the “Sea of Knowledge - 2019” project included an intellectual competition consisting of qualifying games and a super-game, a creative competition “Let's take care of our sea”, an interactive exhibition “The World of Science”, watching popular science films, an educational quest “A Town by the Sea”. Within the framework of the IV Marathon, popular science event Science Slam School was held in Sevastopol for the first time.
On the day of the marathon opening, October 29, qualifying games of the intellectual competition were held. They were attended by 11 school teams. Each team consisted of five players - students of 7 – 9 grades. In order to reach the final, the students had to solve the tasks of five different-format contests and score as many points as possible for their team. The qualifying game included the usual (for those who had previously participated in the marathon) questions of the format “What? Where? When?”, “Associations”, “Believe/ Don’t believe”, “Guess the object / phenomenon / animal from the picture” and many people’s favorite contest “What has changed on the map?”, However, this year instead of the map the players were offered D.I. Mendeleev’s periodic table of chemical elements. All tasks of the intellectual competition were developed by a team of employees from two research institutes - MHI and A. O. Kovalevsky Institute of Marine Biological Research of Russian Academy of Sciences. To prepare for the marathon, the students were sent in advance electronic materials recommended by the project organizers.
The interactive exhibition “World of Science” provided for each event participant an opportunity to make their small opening at the festival venue. The amazing life of a rapana predatory mollusk became a discovery for someone, someone else became interested in the clues of the secrets of distant planets or wanted to go on an expedition together with scientists and put into practice previously unseen devices. Maybe someone first heard that the ocean can be studied remotely using computer models, satellites and drift technology. The exhibition was attended by employees of Marine Hydrophysical Institute, a group of colleagues from A. O. Kovalevsky Institute of Marine Biological Research of Russian Academy of Sciences, project partners from the Association of Underwater Activities of Crimea and Sevastopol, teachers and pupils of Minor Academy of Sciences, representatives of Crimean Astrophysical Observatory.
A separate exposition area dedicated to the history of Marine Hydrophysical Institute was prepared by employees of the Sevastopol Military History Museum-Reserve.
According to the results of the qualifying games, four teams reached the final: the team of “Moi Gorizonty” school of the same name, the team “Adrenaline” of gymnasium No. 1, the team “Volna” of school No. 19 and the team “Brigantina”of school No. 57.
The second day of the Marathon was dedicated to the super-game. This time it was called “The Black Sea Treasure Hunt”. Each team had to pave their way, guided by a real pirate map, and collect as many treasures as possible in the form of unraveled questions. Each cell of the map contained a specific task. These were the usual questions from like “What? Where? When? ” and blitz-questions, as well as fascinating video puzzles, where a fragment of a familiar film or cartoon needed to guess a phenomenon or process in the oceans. The most unexpected for the players was the task of the Black Box format. An unfamiliar scientific instrument was brought into the studio and in two minutes children had to determine how scientists use it in their work and guess the name of this device.
The final game was beautiful and worthy. The competent jury noted high training level of playing teams. As a result of a fair fight, the following teams became the winners of the IV Regional Intellectual Marathon on Oceanology “The Sea of Knowledge”: the “Brigantine” team of school No. 57, which took the1st place; “Volna” team of school No. 19 – the 2nd place; “Adrenaline” team of gymnasium No. 1 – the 3rd place.
After a tense finale, the teams were invited to participate in the educational quest “A Town by the Sea”. Even the mild weather did not prevent an unusual walk in your favorite town. The guys divided into two teams and, accompanied by curators and organizers of the quest, readily and quickly solved puzzles and moved along their routes. At each point on the route, the teams received letters, which in the final were to form one word – “Oceanology”.
On October 31, on the International Day of the Black Sea, the solemn ceremony of awarding the participants and winners of the Marathon took place. 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 were awarded personal diplomas and souvenirs from the All-Russian Science Festival, and the winners of each nomination in addition received free tickets to the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory, to the Underground Sevastopol Museum, to the Sevastopol History Exhibition, in Sevastopol Aquarium Museum and sweet prizes from “Medobory” company.
The awarding of the winners of the intellectual contest was no less solemn. The children and team curators were also awarded with Marathon diplomas, souvenirs, free tickets and sweet prizes. Special prizes in the form of board games “Open Ocean”, developed by scientists of the Marine Hydrophysical Institute, went to the players of the Brigantine team, which took 1st place.
The most striking gift for all the guests of the holiday was the final event of the Marathon - the scientific battle of future scientists at Science Slam School.
The school scientific duel participants were:
Each fighter was given no more than 10 minutes to speak, and this time was enough for young geniuses to conquer the audience. The hall exploded with applause. A sound level meter - a device that determines the winner by the volume of the audience standing ovation, showed almost the same numbers on the display every time. And yet, with a small margin from the rest of the guys, the victory in the first scientific battle in Sevastopol for schoolchildren was won by Igor Nikolaevsky.
Photos by: Alesya Medvedeva, Nikita Loginov, Pavel Polikarpov, Maxim Mukhanov.