Kemiaa Kaikille!

Every April, Joensuu holds an event called SciFest.  As the name suggests, it is a science festival of sorts.  Filling the arena with hundreds of science-related booths, this festival aims to "bring science, technology and the environment closer to young people in challenging and interesting ways."  It is geared for students from preschool to high school, and has booths that offer an array of activities to engage students and stimulate their interest in various scientific and mathematical fields. 

Every detail of SciFest is geared towards getting
students interested in science—even the 'street' signs!

As it is the International Year of Chemistry (as determined by UNESCO), the theme for this year's SciFest was "Kemiaa Kaikille'—Chemistry for All!  While booths ranged in topics from archeology to triangle geometry, there were a substantial number of chemistry booths too.  Honestly, I do not think they could have chosen a more perfect theme (...just a chemistry major's bias).


While each station had its own perks, they all
strived to be hands-on.  Here, some elementary
students mix chemicals to make bouncy balls.

After wandering through most of the booths, I must say that one of my favorites was CSP: Crime Scene Physics.  This station was developed by a group of aspiring physics teachers.  Students were introduced to the crime with a video.  Then, after breaking into small groups of four to five, they got to analyze different aspects of the crime using some really high-tech equipment.  Just to list a few, they had a glossmeter for fingerprint matching, infrared spectrometer for substance identification, specialized scanner coupled with a MatLab program to recover a message, high-powered microscope to uncover secret information on silicon disks, and heat-camera to predict time of death.  Wow.  To say I was impressed with their set-up would be a mild understatement.

CSP: Crime Scene Physics. 
Check out this video to get a glimpse into this station.

I do not know how many years this festival has been going on, but I think it is a fantastic idea.  People from all over the community volunteer their time and resources to give students a unique experience.  Not only were there some very cool stations, but many of them showed real-life applications to science.  Furthermore, I was appreciative of the time people took to find English-speaking individuals to give my friend and I mini-tours of their stations.  Reflecting on the event, my friend made the comment, "I think if I had gone to something like this when I was younger, I would have pursued a career in science."  Enough said.