What is the “inner world” and the “road to survival” of the novel coronavirus? What is the magic of the ancient “artifact” pots decorated with fish patterns at the bottom? With these questions, more than 300 visitors from Tianjin including citizens, university students, primary and secondary school and kindergarten children came into the laboratory in Nankai campus to participate at the 34th Tianjin Science and Technology Week and the 2020 Nankai University Science and Technology Week, starting a wonderful journey of popular science exploration.

The activities of the Nankai University Science and Technology Week were divided into three sections: life science group activities, open activities in physical science popularization base and State Key Laboratories of pharmaceutical chemical biology. Through interactive, experiential and participatory large-scale science popularization activities, advanced scientific knowledge has been presented to the public. Due to the requirements of the epidemic prevention work, the event opened according to the session in the form of free appointment and interval current-limiting.

 

At the beginning of this year, the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic swept the world. In the life sciences section, with the theme of “life science brings you to know the simplest but deleterious organism - COVID-19”, the knowledge of the generation, detection and prevention of this novel coronavirus has been popularized in various forms, as watching a series of popular science videos, exploring the structure of the COVID-19 in “real-life simulation version”, extracting nucleic acid from bananas and understanding the principle of the COVID-19 antibody detection test kit developed by the Nankai University team.

In order to enhance the interactivity and fun, jigsaw puzzles and interesting experiments has been provided in each link of the life science group. Visitors enjoyed it, especially the children.

In the laboratory of cell biology and genetics, Honggang Wang, experimenter at the national biology experimental teaching demonstration center of Nankai University, guided us to observe mitochondria in cells through a fluorescence microscope.

Entering the popular science education base about physics of Nankai University is like walking into a wonderful museum full of science and technology. In the physics demonstration hall of about 200 square meter, they showed more than 100 kinds of the most common experimental items of college physics experiments. In the opening activities, Zongqiang Chen, experimenter of the national experimental teaching demonstration center of basic physics of Nankai University, demonstrated the magical principle of polarized light through an interesting magic trick. According to the introduction, in this section there were more than 50 kinds of interesting experiments of physics demonstration focusing on optics. Visitors could operate it by hand and have had a “zero distance” contact with science.

 

Some profound physical phenomena and principles like glow discharge, 3D imaging, Tesla coil, magnetic levitation, Lenz’s law and magnetic field change, has become vivid and easy to understand in the explanation and interesting experiments of teachers and students in Nankai. Laser harp, pots decorated by fish, birds always drinking water (a kind of perpetual motion machine), hand-held batteries and other items containing scientific principles also broadened everyone’s horizon. The organizers also prepared a science experiment gift bag for each teenager visitor, so that they could feel the charm of science at home.

Guoquan Zhang, Dean of the school of physical science of Nankai University, also came to the scene to explain some relevant principles. We hope to attract teenagers to get close to physics and fall in love with physics through more demonstration experiments, so as to give full play to the function of popularization and education.

The opening activities of the State Key Laboratory of pharmaceutical chemistry and biology will be held from August 24 to 28 in Jinnan campus of Nankai University. With the theme of “science-based approach with innovation in fighting the epidemic to make our nation strong”, the basic morphology of protein molecules and virus particles observed by electron microscopy will be displayed; antibody drugs screening and science popularization will be carried out, cell microstructure and cell movement demonstration experiments based on confocal microscope as well as cell 3D printing demonstration will be presented as well. Furthermore, the cutting-edge advanced science will be presented to the public in a really intuitive and interesting way.

The 34th Tianjin Science and Technology Week focused on the theme of “fighting epidemic with science and technology, popularizing science for the citizens, strengthening the city by innovation”, focusing on scientific support for COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control, demonstrated the achievements of scientific and technological warfare and scientific and technological innovation through rich scientific communication activities. The Nankai Science and technology week is one of the key activities of Tianjin Science and technology week. It is jointly organized by the Association for science and technology of Nankai University, College of life science, School of physical science and State Key Laboratory of pharmaceutical chemistry and biology.

(Reported by Li Zhang, Translated by Zhifang Lyu, Photographed by Li Zhang and Qiqi Zong, Edited by Davide Francolino and JianjingYun)