News--Welcome to National Chiayi University

　　Here comes again the “Taiwan Popular Science Train”! The train stopped by Chiayi Minxiong Station on May 3rd at 11:27 a.m. A team composed of students from the Department of Applied Chemistry, National Chiayi University, had prepared a series of interesting, fun science activities for 350 elementary school students from Yunlin and Chiayi counties to explore the scientific world. The scientific games, which took place both on the train and at the square before the station, aimed to enhance the fun of learning science and allow the pupils to learn scientific principles through the games. To promote and popularize science, parents were invited to play scientific games with their kids; even passersby interested in science were welcomed to join the games anytime.

　　Hong Huang-You, Dean of the College of Science and Engineering, NCYU, indicated that the Taiwan Popular Science Train program was carried out with assistance from the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Science and Technology. NCYU shouldered the task of integrating local educational resources with a view to contributing to the promotion of basic science education by introducing the local children to the richest and most comprehensive scientific knowledge. Children, parents and passengers were all invited to stop by and participate in the brainstorming scientific games.

　　The Taiwan Popular Science Train this year had welcomed around 200 children and parents from MinSyong Elementary School and Tong Rong Elementary School in Chiayi County on board. A total of twelve scientific checkpoint games were jointly designed by NCYU’s Department of Applied Chemistry and National Shan-Hua Senior High School. Supervised by the students, a wide array of science checkpoint games kicked off on 10:00 a.m. When the train arrived, the children and parents who had ridden the train at the previous stop got off for the checkpoint games. The students from Chiayi who got on the train at Minxiong Station traveled south to join the scientific games on the train and at Tainan Station.

　　To mimic the superpower in the renowned cartoon “One Piece,” as demonstrated by Aokiji Taish?’s Ice-Ice Fruit, the scientific games allowed the children to experience the fun of wielding the superpower of Devil Fruit. In the checkpoint game of the traditional toy–ping-pong spinning top, the children needed to place a spinning top cut out of a ping-pong ball on a plastic plate painted with a maze, which should then be tilted and flipped to get the ping-pong ball out of the maze. The checkpoint game of Eneru’s Rumble-Rumble Fruit, on the other hand, was related to electrology. In the game, the participants had to make a fluorescent light glow, and alcohol burn by means of static electricity. According to Ye Zhilin, advisor from National Shan-Hua Senior High School, the various on-site scientific games were orchestrated to enable the children who dislike listening to lectures in class to cultivate an interest in science through fun games.