PiA 2022 goes to Ukraine

This year is really unusual for all people of Ukraine (not only for the STEM teachers). I am not going to tell about the complicated political and really hard economic situation in our country now, but would like to spread the information that Ukraine as so as the STEM education is alive. There are some proof of my words and one of them is the participation of Ukrainian schools and pupils in an exciting Christmas Calendar PiA 2022 (or it can be called Christmas marathon of Hands-On Experiments in Physics).

The registration process for the event started on the 1st of November and nearly 2000 people (pupils, STEM teachers and schools) have been registered this year. Lots of teachers are SonS members and former participants of SonS festivals. They are really creative teachers with their students.
So the main participants are students from 12 to 16 years of age. They are from 19 Ukrainian cities. There are representatives from Eastern and Western Regions of Ukraine. Most of them like physics and want to do simple Hands-On experiments with household objects. And what is most impressive for me: in spite of the problems with Internet, electricity, military actions and bombing in some Regions children with their teachers do experiments every day and make impressive videos. They are real HEROES!

More than half proposed experiments have been done successfully. I am really proud that nine of them were developed and proposed by me this year. The most active cities and participants are from Kamenetsk-Podolskyi, Kharkiv, Kyiv, Poltava, Chernivtsy, Gorishni-Plavni, Shpola, Dnipro, Lohvytsia etc. Even children who are in Europe now are taking part in the event and do experiments every day. Some people wonder why it is so important, but it demonstrates to all of Europe that even school children are invincible in such a complicated political situation and Russian military actions. They want to learn, and love physics, which at present is of  great strategic importance. Our people cannot be defeated in their desire to be independent, because our children have shown courage and strong wish to study without electricity and the Internet during 8 hours every day, lack of equipment at schools, lack of food and lots of necessary things. Perhaps not all participants will be able to win prizes, but there is a preliminary agreement with Prof. Dr. Arnulf Quadt (the main organizer of the competition) that the winners will be able to travel to Germany and visit the Georg-August University in Göttingen. In addition, we hope that prizes from Germany will also reach our schoolchildren, in case they win and wish to reach the end of PiA on the Holly Christmas day 24th of December 2022.

I would like to give many thanks to my colleagues who sent some prizes for the future Ukrainian Winners, among them are: Dr. Anders Blomqvist SonS Sweden, Ms. Petra Proskova from  “Elixir do Skol” from the Czech Republic and some of my colleagues from Poland. Also, I would like to give many thanks to Prof. Dr. Arnulf Quadt for the possibility to take part at the PiA 2022 and the proposition for the winners to visit Germany for free to know more about this beautiful country.
Here are our young heroes from Ukraine. Glory to Ukraine! Glory to her young heroes, participants of the PiA 2022! Wish them luck!

Report: Nataliya Kazachkova

You can see some of the PiA work of Ukraine here:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/805895179541236