Report of the meeting Les petits débrouillards

Friday 21/04/23

We split into 4 groups: 2 on heat islands and 2 on water.
Each group was divided into 2. While one group was doing an experiment, the other group was playing a game that consisted of linking a word to its definition. I was in a group that was working on the heat island.
For the experiment we had 4 small glass jars, 2 heat lamps, one black and one white paper, a big bowl and water. It was up to us to find the 2 experiments to do. For the first one we took two small pots and filled them with the same amount of water. We took the temperature of the water in each pot and then we covered one of them with a big bowl and put them both under the heat lamp. We took the temperature of the water every 10 minutes. At the end, we noticed that the water in the pot that was covered with a large bowl had a higher temperature than the other pot. We thus synthesized the greenhouse effect.

For the other experiment we also filled two jars with the same amount of water, one surrounded by black paper and the other by white paper. Then we took one of these two jars and put them on a black and white sheet of paper respectively. We placed the heat lamp on top and then took the temperature of the water. We took measurements every 10 minutes like the previous experiment. At the end we could see that the black pot contained warmer water than the white pot. We could therefore deduce that the black pot absorbed more heat than the white one.
Then we went around the school to see the different heat problems. And so we could think about possible solutions.
After that we split into two groups to discuss the pros and cons of air conditioning. It was interesting to find arguments while respecting the opinion of one's party (each party had an opinion predefined by the moderator).
This workshop opened our eyes to problems that already exist close to us.