Last Friday, at this hour of the day, we were finishing to prepare all the things, because at 17h the marquee situated in Plaça Vivenç Vives of Girona had to be opened for the public to celebrate the Researchers’ Night 08.

Different authorities attended the presentation of the Researchers’ Night, like Màrius Rubiralta (State secretary of universities), Blanca Palmada (universities’ commissioner), Anna Maria Geli (rector of UdG), Miquel Duran (vice rector of UdG and chemistry teacher in the same university), Anna Pagans (mayor of Girona) and Sílvia Simon (coordinator of Researchers’ Night and chemistry teacher of UdG).

Pagans is talking and, behind her, Duran, Simon, Geli, Palmada and Rubiralta (from left to right of the picture)

Once the presentation had finished and the presents of the photography contest “How is a scientist?” had been given, the sicence party started. During all night we enjoyed the presence of Dani Jiménez, a scientific communicator and a contributor in the TV3 program “El club”, who was the presenter of the act.

To make the presentation of the act, Dani Jiménez proposed an experiment to Duran and Rubiralta, which consisted in puttting out the candles “2008″ of the cake with the air made by the vibration and percussion of the drum’s membrane.

The visitors of the Researchers’ Night could enjoy a good night by walking through the marquee and seeing the diferents stands, by mixting theirselves between the scientists their were able to observe, experiment and know the work made by researchers of different types of science. Between the proposed activities the visitors could experiment and enjoy experiences like How to make clouds, play with the game who is who, observe the technique used for cavemen to create fire, they could live an accident practice, they enjoyed spectacular chemical and alchemical experiments… and there was hot chocolate for children (we had to give energy to the future scientists).

Some children paying attention with the chemical experiments; moldels of the absolutely symmetrical molecule of fulerene (  C₆₀ ), also knowed as futbolene for its structure, which is like a football ball, in the first shot (made with paper) and on the left (made with balloons).

Once the dark arrived, the most eargerly awaited part arrived too… The most spectacular experiments, which were made outside of the marquee. The UdG chemists made a very visual experiment based on the combustion of titbits with which we demostrated the huge quantity of energy that glucose contains.

And Dani Jiménez made our hearts jumped with an impressive implosion of a can by using only water and fire to do the experiment.

And as all goes well if finishes well, at the end of the party we could listen to a Orchestra Fireluche’s concert.

After a magic night like this we hope that people who visited the marquee last Friday in Girona, and the visitors of the Researchers’ Night celebrated in Sabadell and Murcia and a lot more cities from all around the world, have another concept of science, scientists and researchers.

Cheers for Science!