WWW.Radioactivity. What is? Where is it? Why is there?

J. DESIMONI; L. ERRICO; J. RUNCO; M.L. MONTES; M.A. TAYLOR

Mérida

Congreso; 4Th International Congress on Energy and Environment Engineering and management; 2011

Universidad de Extremadura

Introduction ? Public opinion regarding nuclear energy production appears to be strongly divided. Nearly identical amount of citizens express support for nuclear energy and opposition to. Most of the people are fearful of radiation. Media have fostered mindset that all radiation is harmful, always referred to as ?Deadly Radiation? or regardless of the amount. The radioactivity is always associated with catastrophes, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs and the Chernobyl accident. Why have the people this perception? Fear arises some times because of lack of knowledge about what radiation is. Our Group is concern since 2005 on helping people to understand what radiation is, where we can found it and why is it there. These basic answers would help people to evaluate if it dangerous. In this frame, we are interested on building a bridge between school, society and university. Results and Discussion ? The selected strategy to deal with the concept of what radioactivity is, where you can find it and why is there, is built up from the knowledge of basic chemistry to the idea of nuclides, stability and nuclear decay, in connection with the environment safety. For this purpose, we have created an ?Open access laboratory? for high-school student where they can participate of a talk and to perform a research work. These experiences approach them to scientific research in what is related with environment and radioactivity. We also work together with school teachers in workshops where basic technical feature about radioactivity are discussed and some activities for the classroom are suggested. In this frame, we were visited, since 2005, for more than 2000 students as much as for attending our talks as well as for develop an easy research work accompanied by our scientific staff. We also carried out three workshops where more than 150 teachers or students for teaching have attended them. Conclusions ? The continuous interests of students and educators on learning about radioactivity teach us that we are in the right way for build a bridge between school and university. The selected approach allowed us to use the students and teachers of multipliers of the knowledge, being the last link of the chain the society. In addition, this tactic allows as to demystify the radioactivity concepts, its ubiquitous presence in the environment and to install their benefit uses. Moreover, the visit to the laboratory can be considered as the first contact of the student with the scientific system, helping to the students in the future selection of degree studies related with the sciences.