CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Public opinion regarding nuclear energy production appears to be strongly polarized. Nearly identical amount of citizens express support for nuclear energy and opposition to. Mainly people are fearful of radiation. Media have fostered mindset that all radiation is harmful, always referred to as ?Deadly Radiation? regardless of the amount. Radioactivity is always associated with catastrophes like the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs and the Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents. Why have people this perception? Fear arises some times because of lack of knowledge about what radiation is. The GISDRAMA group (Grupo de Investigación y Servicios de Radiactividad en Medio Ambiente) offers since 2005 a place where to ask, informing what to know and discussing why to inform about radioactivity.The objective of the developed activities is to provide people trustworthy information to understand what radioactivity is, where it can be found and when represents risks. In this frame, the group is interested on building a bridge between school, society and university.The selected strategy is to offer the possibility of visiting the ?Open access laboratory? and to attend talks devoted to school student and citizens. For high- school students the participation of short research experience is also proposed. Moreover, workshops promoting basic technical feature about radioactivity and some classroom activities for school teacher are performed. The selected approach turns students and teachers into knowledge multipliers. In addition, this tactic demystifies the radioactivity concepts, remarking its ubiquitous presence in the environment and discusses their benefit uses. Additionally, the visit to the laboratory can be considered as the first contact of the student with the scientific system, helping them in the future selection of degree studies related with the sciences.