Workshops for primary and secondary schools

Our climate is changing rapidly, and its effects are felt daily across the globe: extreme droughts, floods, and an unprecedented rise in temperatures. To make the complex dynamics behind this phenomenon more tangible and easier to understand, intertwining science, economics, and social dynamics, we have developed a board game that simulates the challenges of climate change. This workshop offers a practical and interactive approach to exploring the global strategies currently underway and the crucial role of scientific research. Together, we can experience firsthand the delicate balances and compromises required to confront the climate challenge: will you play with us?

Where do our emotions come from? What happens in our brains when we are scared or when we laugh? Through experiments and hands-on activities, we will try to understand what happens in our bodies when we feel something and discover whether science has found ways to measure and understand our emotions.

What do we eat? And more importantly, why do we eat? Simple chemistry experiments will help us understand the ingredients in our food and why they are so important for our health and growth.

Microscopes, micropipettes and molecules: in this workshop, we follow in the footsteps of the researchers working in Eurac Research’s biomedical laboratories. We learn how to use laboratory instruments. And we analyse the results of our experiments to learn new things about cells, DNA and bacteria.

Our nose is not as sensitive – nor as big! – as those of many other animal species. That is why we often forget how important our sense of smell is. By exploring the world of aromas, scents and smells, we learn how our nose works and discover why our lives would be very complicated without it

Programming a robot without a digital screen? It is possible! In this workshop, we immerse ourselves in the world of robots, understand how they “think” and learn how to interact with them.

We often think of agriculture as a very traditional industry... But in reality, it is not. Farms are becoming more and more “smart”: farmers use various sensors to monitor plants and harvests and use increasingly autonomous machines to perform the more strenuous tasks. We will try this out for ourselves on a small scale, using sensors and microprocessors to monitor the condition of plants and soil.

Playing with Lego is fun, right? Absolutely! But what if our creations could move and transform into miniature robots? In this workshop, we learn the basics of construction and robot programming in a fun way. Sounds cool, doesn’t it?

Using colourful building blocks, cables, motors and sensors, we build a group of robots that cooperate with each other: a real “intelligent system” that we will program with a tablet. Along the way, we will show you how block programming works.

Discover what energy is and how insulating and conductive materials work. We construct an electrical circuit with copper wire, batteries and light bulbs. Then, we use a microprocessor to explore how energy “flows”. It’s not magic, it’s the power of knowledge!

Using the visual programming language Scratch, we quickly and intuitively create our own animated film. By blending creativity, logic and computer science, we learn what is behind this technology, which we often deal with unconsciously in everyday life.

Time flies when you’re playing video games. But it’s even more fun when you program the game yourself and make your own rules. We show you how it works, from selecting settings and characters to choosing the difficulty level... and then the real challenge begins!