Abstract:

The ChemEve: Chemistry EveryWhere project is based on Researchers’ Night FP7-PEOPLE call. This activity consisted of seven main Events on the 23rd September 2011, which gathered around 15000 people, organized by seven public entities around Spain: Girona (C4D - University of Girona), Murcia (University of Murcia), Burgos (Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución Humana), Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Fundación Universitaria de Las Palmas), Oviedo (Universidad de Oviedo), Valladolid (PRAE – Junta de Castilla y León) and Mallorca (Associació de Joves Investigadores de les Illes Balears). The celebrations of Researchers’ Night in Europe collected more than 300 events, all of them at the same day and hour.

The main objective Researcher’ Night is to enhance the recognition of researchers and their role in society. Being 2011 the International Year of Chemistry (IYC11) each researchers’ work was related with chemistry using some experiment, letting the general public know that researchers are “common people”. The role of the project went around showing that Everything is Chemistry and Chemists are Everywhere. For this purpose, the Communicative facet of researchers together with some hands-on experiments were used to bring them closer to the large public by presenting researchers as “common people”, to which people could be identified with, in order to convince young people to embark on scientific careers.

In Girona, the project was focused on Marie Curie, a pioneer in the early study of radiation and awarded two Nobel prizes. Madame Curie was the first in physics and chemistry using the term radioactivity. Because of the centenary of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry delivered to Marie Curie and to commemorate the International Year of Chemistry it was organized the itinerary called The Chemistry of Life!. In order to make clear that chmesitry is present in people's lives from early in the morning when we wake up until we go to bed. During the tour different activities were found: workshops, demonstrations, exhibits, experiments, and so on. Each point of interest every day became an attractive business to interact with researchers.

La Casa de Cultura in Girona was filled with different spaces where researchers from the University of Girona were showing, through a routine day, the relationship between chemistry research and interactive activities and fun.

Keywords:

Chemistry, PreUniversity, society, Researchers' Night, Dissemination.