In the week 8th - 13th of June 2015 took place the sixth and the final project meeting of the Comenius Project "Science Experiments on Renewable EnergieS" at College Francois Mitterrand Toulouges, France. At this meeting had participated groups of teachers and pupils from all the partner schools: Romania (2 teachers - 4 pupils), Turkey (3 teachers - 5 pupils), Netherlands (3 teachers - 4 pupils),  Italy (2 teachers - 4 pupils), Lithuania (3 teachers - 2 pupils) and of course the hosting France teachers and pupils. The programme of the meeting for the four working days was extremely well organised, combining the final evaluation and final exhibition activities with interesting solar theme visit at Odeillo research center and also some cultural visits in Perpignan, Collioure and Paullile.

         In the first morning we were warmly welcomed by the headmaster of College Francois Mitterrand, the project coordinators Guillaume Lebatard and Elisabeth Miquel and the school's teachers. We started with the final evaluation questionarre, pupils beeing splitted in 2 groups and invited to complete the test. All of them did a great job, showing that the project has reached it's goals, knowing the studied types of renewable energies - sun energy, wind energy, water energy, geothermal energy and biomass - and the ways that they can be used instead of the polluting fossil fuels. The questionairre also contained some questions about the countries visited during the two years project, and about personal impressions of the pupils regarding the entire project.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

             Meanwhile, the winner drawings from the Town of the Future local contests were exposed in the library of the school and everybody was invite to vote the best one. After a cultural moment of watching and trying a Catalan Dance, we had lunch together at the school's canteen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

       Then we  visited PerpignanTown, finishing our walking with the famous Kings of Majorca Palace.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

           The second day started with announcing of the Town of the Future drawing contest winner, which was the Romanian one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

        Then we leave the school and we went to the City Hall of Toulouges, the place for our final exhibition - forum, opened to the public. In the morning every country prepared the panels with posters and the tables for experiments, and in the afternoon the guests started to come to visit the exhibition. It must be mention that every participant wore a nice white T-shirt with the project logo and also the booklet of experiments was on every country's stand. The exhibition was a big success, lots of all ages people came to see our work. They asked questions and the could do by themselves experiments. We can tell that it really was a big interactive science event, as you can see in the pictures.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

             After the final exhibition all the project teachers and coordinators gathered for a final evaluation of the project, to analyse and evaluate the project outcomes, to split the further tasks in order to be prepared for completing the final report and the European Shared Treasure database.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     After such big work the next day pupils and teachers worthed a little freetime and a visit to Paullile, which is a former dynamite factory but now is a nice green place at the Mediteranian Sea. Pupils could swim and enjoy the good weather.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

          In the final day we visited the Odeillo Solar Furnace which is situated in the Pyrenees Moutains. Odeillo is one of the sunniest place on Earth, with over 3500 hours of sunshine per year. This is the reason why Odeillo is the home to the world's largest solar furnace. Built in 1969 by the National Scientific Research Center, the solar furnace consist of a field of 63 heliostatic mirrors mounted on terraces on the surrounding hillside which bounce the sun’s rays onto a large concave mirror. This focuses an enormous amount of sunlight onto an area roughly the size of a cooking pot, raising its temperature to 3500 degrees Centigrade. The parabolic mirror itself is built out of 10000 individual mirrors and covers an area of almost 2000 square meters.

        Here the pupils could participate at many small experiments about light reflexion and refraction, for better understanding of the solar furnace principle. We also saw a movie about the Solar Furnace and everybody enjoyed this science time, even if they had to complete a test about experimented optics knowledge. Odeillo was an interesting and unique experience, well fitted in our project, showing another way for using sun energy beside the folovoltaic solar panels, which are well known and present anywhere (even the City Hall air conditioning was obtained through solar panels on the roof of the building).

 

 

 

 

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     In the evening we came to school again for a ceremony of inauguration of a nice plaquette about our project and then we had a last dinner together and so it ended a beautiful but unfortunatelly last project meeting.  Many thanks to the organisers of the meeting, to pupils and to the parents that took good care of our pupils. It was a beautiful last meeting and a nice and successful project! Hope to keep in touch and see each other in future projects together!