In all, there are more than 90 lectures whose main aim is to arouse interest in the various areas of science.
The lectures can take place in person and/or using distance learning technologies.
Take a look at the free lectures on offer from each of our departments:
Target audience: primary schools - 5th to 8th grade
Activity: a series of activities supported and explained by monitors
Materials needed: To be provided by the Biology Department: aquariums, air pumps, magnifying glass, electric extension lead, trays, drums for transporting seawater, jars for transporting organisms, storage boxes.
Teacher: Sara Antunes
(EAD available)
The lectures are also available via distance learning technologies
Target audience: secondary school students
Lecturer: Alípio Jorge
Target audience: secondary school students
Lecturer: Alípio Jorge
Target audience: secondary school students
Lecturer: Ana Paula Tomás
Target audience: secondary school students
Lecturer: Ana Paula Tomás
Target audience: secondary school students, with possible adaptation to the 3rd cycle of basic education
Lecturer: Ana Paula Tomás e José Paulo Leal
Target audience: students in the 3rd cycle of basic education
Lecturer: Inês Dutra
Target audience: secondary school and lower secondary school students
Activity: Accessing a web page (yes, the Internet is not just the Web) seems very simple, but behind it are several protocols that allow a computer with a browser in Portugal to access a web page in Australia. In this talk we'll dissect (without harming any computers) some of the protocols used to establish these connections and transport our data.
Lecturer: Pedro Brandão
Target audience: secondary school students, with possible adaptation to the 3rd cycle of basic education
Activity: Everyone on this planet is separated by just six people. Six degrees of separation between us and all human beings. The president of the United States. A gondolier in Venice. Each new friend is a new door, opening onto new worlds." John Guare, Six Degrees of Separation (1990).
How many friends are there between us and anyone else on Facebook? How can Google tell us the most important pages for our search? How can we try to understand the human brain and its 100 billion neurons? Why does an epidemic spread so quickly? To answer these and many other questions, we have to study the connection diagrams, the networks, which show the complex interactions between the various components.
In this lecture we will explain precisely what networks are, why they are everywhere and why there is a whole scientific field dedicated to studying them. We'll look at some of the main methods, results and applications and realise how any of us can extract meaning from the networks around us. We'll give an interactive demonstration of how to analyse a network, visually exploring its content. We'll also talk a little about the research we do in the area and how computers can be exploited to speed up computing and provide new discoveries.
Lecturer: Pedro Ribeiro
Target audience: secondary school students
Lecturer: Rita Ribeiro
The lectures are also available via distance learning technologies
Target audience: 3rd cycle of basic education and secondary education (adaptable to other target audiences)
Scheme: online
Activity: The lecture aims to provide a brief scientific introduction to the functioning of the climate system and the problems associated with climate change and its impacts. The following topics are included:
Duration: 50 minutes
Lecturer: Manuel Salgueiro da Silva
Target audience: students and teachers of the 3rd cycle of basic education and secondary education
Activity: In an era known as the Internet of Things (IoT), in which we are witnessing a real revolution in the paradigm of our daily lives, with digitalisation, intelligent mobility and constant monitoring, new energy paradigms are being demanded. This talk will address the near future in which energy production will be all around us and in which we will be energy nanorods. Concepts such as the use and advantages of nanomaterials for optimising energy production and energy storage will be covered. When possible, demonstrations of this energy production will also be presented.
Duration: 50-60 minutes
Lecturer: André Pereira
Target audience: students and teachers of the 3rd cycle of basic education and secondary education
Activity: Physics has been playing a fundamental role in our society when it comes to developing new technologies. Especially in recent decades with the advent of nanotechnology. This development has taken place in processors, memories, sensors, etc., leading to a new revolution in the Internet of Things. This lecture will cover various examples of scientific discoveries in physics that are now commonplace, and when possible, demonstrations will also be presented.
Duration: 50-60 minutes
Lecturer: André Pereira
Target audience: students and teachers of the 3rd cycle of basic education and secondary education (adaptable according to the level of education)
Activity: The galaxy we live in is boringly the same as all the others in the Universe... right? No, nothing could be further from the truth! In this presentation, we'll be travelling from the Milky Way to discover other galaxies and see how these systems were formed and how they evolve. If there's any fuel left in the ship, we'll still be able to explore some of the extraordinary physical phenomena that occur in galaxies.
Duration: 45-50 minutes
Lecturer: Catarina Lobo
Target audience: secondary school students
Activity: Some quantum properties of materials are as surprising as they are unexpected. This lecture will talk about superconductors that work at unusual temperatures; extremely thin materials, the thickness of a single atom; and excellent electrical insulators that carry electric current excellently.
Duration: 45 minutes
Lecturer: Eduardo Castro
Target audience: secondary school students
Activity: Some quantum properties of materials are as surprising as they are unexpected. In this lecture we will talk about superconductors that work at unusual temperatures; extremely thin materials, with the thickness of a single atom; and excellent electrical insulators that carry electric current excellently.
Duration: 45 minutes
Lecturer: Eduardo Castro
Target audience: students in the 3rd cycle of basic education and secondary education
Activity: Familiar concepts such as speed, force, linear momentum and their interrelationship are enough to understand translational movements. Such movements are essential in the context of the disciplines of the Olympic games. But if you want to perform well in the hammer throw, discus throw or javelin throw, rotational movement is essential. Physics explains why.
Duration: 45 minutes
Lecturer: Eduardo Castro
Target audience: 11th and 12th grade students with a Physics and Chemistry component and Physics university students.
Activity: This lecture presents the physical principles, procedures and equipment for nuclear magnetic resonance imaging. Some of the most commonly used sequences, phase and frequency coding and more modern techniques such as functional imaging and perfusion techniques are also discussed.
Duration: 50 minutes
Lecturer: Joaquim Agostinho Moreira
Target audience: 9th, 10th and 11th grade students
Activity: The aim of this talk is to present some of the properties of our "star" and to understand some of the physical phenomena associated with it, using very simple analogies with objects that we can find in our homes.
Duration: 50 minutes
Lecturer: João Lima
Target audience: 9th, 10th and 11th grade students
Activity: Human nature and the search for knowledge. What is implied. The religious, artistic and scientific perspective. The scientific method and what follows from it. Science and technology. Time and time scales. The Earth and the Cosmos. The Universe and its incomprehensible magnitude. Dark matter and dark energy. The current understanding of the structure and evolution of the Universe. The Big Bang, the aftermath and the before. The fine tuning of the laws of physics. The hardware and software of the Universe. Cosmic information and life. Many questions. The Earth as Humanity's Common Home. The present time and the fork in the road facing humanity. Hope and the future.
Duration: 50 minutes
Lecturer: José Luís Santos
Target audience: 9th, 10th and 11th grade students
Activity: Visit to optical phenomena in the atmosphere. The crucial role of the atmosphere as an interface between man and the cosmos. The Earth from space. Why is the sky blue? Why are clouds white? Why is the sun red at sunrise and sunset? The rainbow or the bridge between poetry and science. Patterns of light around the Sun and Moon. Twilight rays. The Earth's shadow. Auroras. Electrical phenomena in the atmosphere. Mirages. The Green Ray and the beautiful story in Jules Verne's novel.
Duration: 50 minutes
Lecturer: José Luís Santos
Target audience: 9th, 10th and 11th grade students
Activity: What is Energy? The two basic forms of Energy: the Energy of movement (Kinetic Energy) and the Energy of interactions (Potential Energy). Energy and the laws of physics. Transformations between these two forms of Energy. The central importance of these transformations in the evolution of the Universe. Photosynthesis: a remarkable example of energy transformation. Energy stored on Planet Earth. Where does it come from? The utilisation of these energy reserves. Energy and the problem of climate change and the sustainable evolution of civilisation. Some reflections.
Duration: 50 minutes
Lecturer: José Luís Santos
Target audience: 9th, 10th and 11th grade students
Activity: What is meant by sustainability and what it involves in its energy, environmental and social components. Social sustainability and planetary sustainability. The three crucial elements of planetary sustainability: energy, water and food. Current situation and the need to build a new paradigm. The concept of planetary boundaries established in 2009. The crucial factor of social sustainability. What it means and the consequences for the future. The fork in the road facing humanity. The concept of Humanity's Common Home. Reflections.
Duration: 50 minutes
Lecturer: José Luís Santos
Target audience: students in the 3rd cycle of basic education and secondary education
Activity: The discovery in recent years of hundreds of planets from other worlds in the Universe has shown us that planetary systems are common. The search for other Earths has become one of the hottest topics in modern astrophysics, motivating the development of new instruments and space missions. What's more, the detection of new planets that are increasingly similar to our Earth opens up enormous prospects for one day being able to give a positive answer to the question "is there life elsewhere in the Universe?". In this talk, we will address the topic of the search for planets around other stars, the so-called extrasolar planets. The physical principles most commonly used by astrophysicists to detect these objects will be described in simple terms. We will understand how astrophysicists "play" with the light coming from stars to detect and characterise distant planets. Some examples of the latest research results will also be shown. Finally, we'll discuss the future of this exciting scientific topic and Portugal's participation in this conquest, which is very similar to the epic discoveries of the 15th and 16th centuries: will we also find other inhabitants on another "beach" in our Galaxy?
Duration: 45-60 minutes
Lecturer: Nuno Santos
Target audience: students in the 3rd cycle of basic education and secondary education (adaptable to other target groups)
Activity: By studying the structure and composition of asteroids and meteorites we are learning about the formation not only of the Earth, but of the entire Solar System.
In this lecture we will cover the following topics, among others: what asteroids are and where they are located; Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) and Near-Earth Asteroids (NEAs); Potentially Dangerous Asteroids; asteroid impacts with the Earth; the Tunguska event; the drilling of the Chicxulub crater and the mass extinction of the dinosaurs - scientific evidence; the Chelyabinsk meteor; the Dawn mission and the asteroids Vesta and Ceres; the Hayabusa2 mission (JAXA) and the collection and return to Earth of samples from the asteroid Ryugu; the OSIRIS-REX mission (NASA) and the asteroid Bennu; "Asteroid Day" in Portugal and around the world.
Duration: 50 minutes
Lecturer: Teresa Seixas
Target audience: students in the 3rd cycle of basic education and secondary education (adaptable to other target groups)
Activity: Humanity is increasingly dependent on space technology to support life on Earth. We are launching objects into space more than ever before! Since the Soviet Union launched the first satellite in 1957, Sputnik, thousands of space vehicles / satellites / space objects have been launched into space, with a dramatic increase in recent years. In this talk we will present the technical and economic challenge of avoiding collisions with space junk, as well as the United Nations space junk mitigation guidelines. We will also address the question: "End of missions: what to do next?" and the management of orbital debris re-entry versus the sustainability of space use.
Duration: 45-50 minutes
Lecturer: Teresa Seixas
Target audience: teachers of the 3rd cycle of basic education, secondary education and higher education
Activity: We will present a pedagogical practice of active learning in a co-operative environment, using whiteboards, developed in different Physics curricular units at FCUP. We will also analyse the continued use of the methodology in different Physics curricular units. At the same time, we will discuss the awareness of the procedures to be followed for greater student involvement in the subjects taught, as well as for improving their learning and, consequently, their academic success.
Duration: 45-50 minutes
Lecturer: Teresa Seixas
Target audience: 9th to 12th grade students
Activity: Blue planet. That's how many reports and documentaries begin, and that's also how we often refer to the planet we live on. The fact that approximately 2/3 of its surface is covered by water makes it obvious why we call it that. However, when did we really realise this? When did we start looking at the Earth as the "blue planet"? Most likely when we were able to observe it from space! This notion of colour, grandeur, vulnerability and even fragility became much more real the moment satellite images became available.
Lecturer: Ana Cláudia Teodoro
Target audience: 9th to 12th grade students
Lecturer: Helena Sant'Ovaia
Target audience: 9th to 12th grade students
Lecturer: Joaquim Esteves da Silva
Target audience: 9th to 12th grade students
Lecturer: Joaquim Esteves da Silva
Target audience: 9th to 12th grade students
Lecturer: Joaquim Esteves da Silva
Target audience: 9th to 12th grade students
Lecturer: Joaquim Esteves da Silva
Target audience: 9th to 12th grade students
Lecturer: Joaquim Esteves da Silva
Target audience: 9th to 12th grade students
Presentation: In recent years, the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technologies has evolved in an increasingly conscious way, increasing their importance as a solid base of knowledge and support information in a wide variety of areas. The lecture "Digital Earth: perspectives on geographic information systems" will showcase some of the new GIS technologies applied in different areas, such as the environment, geology, risk management, etc., and the most varied forms of implementation (desktop GIS, mobile GIS, and webSIG), by presenting some examples of work carried out in the field of Geospatial Engineering.
Lecturer: Lia Duarte
Target audience: Adaptable to all audiences (but more suitable for secondary education)
Activity: Juggling is an art that few people would associate with maths. However, there are many more links between these two activities than one might suspect at first glance. This talk will give examples (some very practical!) of this symbiotic relationship between juggling and maths. It also talks about the "essence" of maths, the usefulness of things that seem pointless and the importance of doing the simplest things well.
WARNING: This talk may provoke an uncontrollable desire to learn some juggling moves or, even more seriously, the temptation to study more maths.
Lecturer: António Machiavelo
Target audience: Adaptable to all audiences
Activity: After a brief tour of the history of the "birth" of the number pi, we talk about irrationality and transcendence, the squaring of the circle, surprising formulae, algorithms for calculating it, open problems, mnemonics and poetry, as well as the importance of apparently useless things.
Lecturer: António Machiavelo
Target audience: Adaptable to all audiences
Activity: Much of the importance of prime numbers comes from the fact that they are the "atomic", indivisible components of natural numbers. Despite the simplicity of the notion of prime, there are many unsolved puzzles about these mysterious numbers. What patterns do they form? How many are there? What is the largest known prime number? How was it discovered? These are some of the questions that are addressed in this talk, and others are mentioned that nobody knows how to answer yet. We also talk about the monetary prizes that exist for the discovery of large prime numbers and the reason for these prizes.
Lecturer: António Machiavelo
Target audience: Adaptable to all audiences
Activity: In this talk we'll talk about exotic ways of representing numbers, their most secret properties and some of their most hidden mysteries, really big numbers and some possibilities for starting a conversation with possible intelligent beings from other solar systems.
Lecturer: António Machiavelo
Target audience: Adaptable to all audiences
Activity: Cryptography has been used for millennia by military organisations, governments, secret societies and even lovers. Since the invention of the internet, it has become essential to civil society and is widely used by ordinary people, most of the time without them being aware of it. The aim of this talk is to give an idea of what cryptography is, describe some of its contemporary uses and show how maths is intimately involved in secret communications and electronic commerce, while also enabling many commercial processes to be transposed from the physical world to cyberspace.
Lecturer: António Machiavelo
Target audience: Secondary school teachers (maths and philosophy) and students
Activity: The question of the nature of mathematical objects has long been a source of perplexity for several generations of mathematicians and philosophers. For those who argue that they are nothing more than mental constructions of Homo Sapiens, the problem remains of explaining the enormous effectiveness of maths in dealing with real-world issues. For those who defend their existence, the problem remains of explaining how they exist. This lecture defends the second point of view and tries to give "body" (or is it "soul"?...) to mathematical objects.
Lecturer: António Machiavelo
Target audience: Secondary school teachers and students
Activity: This talk gives examples of concrete, contemporary applications of maths, its role in everyday life, as well as some of its more subtle, but no less important, applications. We'll talk about graphs, cryptography, prime numbers and a few other things, but all with the aim of providing some answers to the eternal question: "And what is this for?".
Lecturer: António Machiavelo
Target audience: Secondary school teachers and students
Activity: This talk discusses possible answers to what is one of the most frequently asked questions by students (and others): "What is it for?". It is argued that, before trying to answer this question, it is important to think carefully about what maths is, a subject on which a personal perspective is given. Examples are given of some of the current applications of maths, showing the role that this area of knowledge plays in the technological fabric, demonstrating its evolutionary importance and its potential for building better futures. Along the way, we talk about the applicability of what is often apparently useless, as well as false dichotomies, particularly the one that (too) often opposes the abstract to the concrete.
Lecturer: António Machiavelo
Target audience: Secondary school teachers and students
Activity: There is much more in common between maths and literature than is commonly realised. This talk will give concrete examples, from mathematically interesting passages in great works of national and world literature to literary movements with a strong mathematical appeal. The aim is also to highlight some intimate relationships between the "essence" of maths and that of poetry.
Lecturer: António Machiavelo
Target audience: Secondary school teachers and students
Activity: From error-correcting codes to cryptography, from various optimisation methods to solving the most difficult logistical problems, mathematics plays an ever-increasing role in business and various industries. Despite this, it is an area of knowledge that is largely unknown to most people, its technological applications being completely invisible, and there are even numerous misconceptions about the nature and objectives of this human activity. Through a few simple examples, we will try to show what maths really is - which Galileo described as the language in which the Universe was written. We will take a very brief journey into the "heart" of Maths, into its innermost side, that of the ideas that allow us to solve some of the deepest enigmas of the Cosmos and tackle complicated problems that our species has had to deal with. It is hoped that this journey, although brief, will reveal the poetic and, at the same time, useful side (these two facets are not antagonistic, as is often thought!) of maths.
Lecturer: António Machiavelo
Target audience: Secondary school teachers and students
Activity: For more than 3,800 years, maths has provided tools that eventually made it possible to discover the shape of the "world" in which we live, which helped to explore other "worlds" in our solar system and, more recently, "worlds" in other planetary systems. These are tools that not only allow us to explore the macrocosm, but also the microcosm. Why is maths so effective in these and other applications? How can it help us discover the invisible (as has already happened), explain things that defy not only common sense, but also our imagination? But can we determine the overall shape of the Universe? Is it finite or infinite? If it's finite, does it have an edge?
Lecturer: António Machiavelo
Target audience: Secondary school teachers and students
Activity: Two methods by the Persian mathematician Abū Rayḥān Bīrūnī (973-1048) are described, one for determining the height of a mountain (note: the method attributed to Thales of Miletus for measuring the height of a pyramid does not apply to mountains - can you see why?), and another for determining the radius of the Earth, which is more practical than the one attributed to Eratosthenes. Along the way we'll also talk about how elementary geometry is used to determine the distance to the stars, as well as how long it would take by car or aeroplane to reach the Moon, the Sun and other stars. And how all this can be used to teach certain maths topics, from primary to secondary school.
Lecturer: António Machiavelo
Activity: Geometry is presented as a particularly pure branch of maths and disconnected from any connection to concrete problems. Let's see how, in fact, geometry can be used to solve very real problems.
Lecturer: José Carlos Santos
Activity: Complex numbers didn't come about because some mathematician or engineer had too much free time. They arose to solve a specific problem. And the story of their origin is rather tortuous.
Lecturer: José Carlos Santos
Target audience: secondary school students
Activity: Mathematically, we can build any cosmological model we like. However, not all of them are a good description of the Universe we observe.
In this talk we will present what we believe to be the scientific cosmological model that, according to the available observations, best describes the way the Universe has evolved, from primordial times to the present day.
Lecturer: Paulo Maurício
Target audience: Intended primarily for the 3rd cycle of basic education; can also be adapted for secondary education
Activity: Until the recent detection of gravitational waves, all the information that reached us, even from the most distant places in the Universe, was, and for the most part still is, carried by electromagnetic radiation.
The importance of "light" in the astronomical context will therefore be emphasised, allowing us to deepen our knowledge of the Universe, and concrete examples of this importance for the evolution of knowledge will be presented.
After a brief historical introduction to the study of the properties of "light" (electromagnetic radiation), some of these properties will be discussed.
Lecturer: Paulo Maurício
Target audience: Adaptable to all levels of education
Activity: We'll talk about the birth of astronomy and cosmology, emphasising their differences and similarities, and how knowledge in these areas has evolved. We'll start in ancient times, with primitive man. We'll pay a 'visit' to the Greek civilisation of antiquity and discuss some of the astronomical and cosmological knowledge it created. We'll talk about Arab civilisation and its importance in making possible the heliocentric revolution started by Nicolaus Copernicus. We end with the inevitable reference to the work of Galileo who, with the use of the telescopic telescope, projected astronomy into a period of evolution and development that would not have been possible otherwise.
Lecturer: Paulo Maurício
Target audience: Adaptable to the 2nd and 3rd cycle of basic education
Activity: In this presentation we will talk about the enormous differences in size or spatial and temporal scales associated with the huge diversity of particles/objects/structures that fill the Universe. From the 'infinitely' small to the 'infinitely' large.
Lecturer: Paulo Maurício
Target audience: Aimed primarily at the 1st cycle of basic education
Activity: We'll go on a journey that starts on Earth and takes us as far away from it as our imagination can take us... Along the way we'll visit some strange but fascinating places. We'll explore nebulae, stars, planets outside the solar system, black holes, other galaxies, etc.
Lecturer: Paulo Maurício
Activity: Theme - Combinatorics and Group Theory
Lecturer: Samuel Lopes
Activity: Theme - Probabilities
Lecturer: Samuel Lopes
Target audience: Teachers
Activity: Theme - Geometry and Symmetry
Lecturer: Samuel Lopes
Activity: Theme - Graphs
Lecturer: Samuel Lopes
Activity: Theme - Graphs and Geometry
Lecturer: Samuel Lopes
Activity: Theme - Graphs, Biology, DNA Reconstruction
Lecturer: Samuel Lopes
Activity: Theme - Geometry
Lecturer: Samuel Lopes
Target audience: Teachers
Lecturer: Samuel Lopes
Target audience: Teachers (with workshop version)
Activity: Theme - Maths and Literature
Lecturer: Samuel Lopes
Target audience: secondary school students
Materials needed: Video projector
Activity: The continuous evolution of computers and calculation algorithms makes it possible to model ever larger and more realistic molecular systems. Today, computational chemistry is strategic in terms of technological development, especially in the areas of biological chemistry and the design of new drugs, catalysts and materials. It is therefore not surprising that the international scientific community has recognised the importance of this area by awarding two Nobel Prizes in Chemistry, in 1998 and 2013, to work on the development of computational tools. This talk explains the growing relevance of computational chemistry and in silico experiments in scientific research and technological development in an industrial context. It will also present examples of modelling and visualising molecular structures using specific open-access programmes that a student/teacher can easily download from the internet and which will enable them to take their first steps in this new area of knowledge.
Lecturer: Alexandre L. Magalhães
Target audience: secondary school students
Materials needed: Multimedia projector
Activity: The issues of the greenhouse effect and the global warming of our planet have aroused growing interest in society. For this reason, its approach has been introduced into the programmes of some secondary school science subjects. This subject is usually analysed in a qualitative way and greenhouse gases are identified according to whether or not they absorb electromagnetic radiation in the infrared (IR) region. Such an approach is rather limited and does not allow students to learn how to correlate a gas's contribution to the greenhouse effect with its physical and chemical properties. For this purpose, it is necessary to consider the frequencies and intensities of the absorption bands of greenhouse gases in the infrared (taking into account their overlap with the earth's emission spectrum), their lifetime in the atmosphere and their emissions resulting from human activities. In this lecture, the problem of the greenhouse effect will be approached from a chemical perspective. In this context, the essential characteristics of an efficient greenhouse gas will be discussed, namely: (i) it must significantly absorb IR radiation in the Earth's spectral windows, (ii) it must have a high average lifetime in the atmosphere and (iii) it must be emitted in large quantities due to human activities.
Lecturer: André Melo
Target audience: primary school students
Materials needed: Multimedia projector
Activity: Telling stories in which values and information content can be presented mainly through playful aspects, distributing scientific information throughout a fictional narrative, where there is room for colourful spaceships and journeys inside the stars, or even conversations with an owl about density and chemical elements, can help to arouse curiosity and prepare the brains of the youngest for processing more intricate knowledge. In this initiative, where precise and complex scientific information is condensed into accessible language and stories that are intended to be attractive, as well as practical proposals and simple experiments, the invitation is fascinating: to experience the territory of stories and play in order to learn, with fascination, the great fascination of chemistry.
Lecturer: Carla Morais
Target audience: secondary school students
Materials needed: Video projector
Activity: Chemistry has been and will continue to be a central science for the development of humanity and societies. The sustainability of the compounds and new materials proposed to satisfy the basic and technological needs of future generations depends on their performance in interaction with the environment and with Man. This lecture will look at various episodes in the evolution of chemistry's contribution to human development, the sustainability of this contribution and its impact on the environment.
Lecturer: Carlos Rocha Gomes
Target audience: secondary school students
Materials needed: Video projector
Activity: The carbon dioxide molecule will serve as the starting point for a journey through chemistry and the environment, passing through life and technology, which support human activity on planet earth. This lecture will cover some fundamental chemistry topics based on this molecule and, at the same time, present its importance for the sustainability of life, for various areas of industrial activity and the implications for the environment.
Lecturer: Carlos Rocha Gomes
Target audience: 9th to 12th grade students
Materials needed: Data-show and table for demonstrations
Activity: In recent times, there has been a growing demand for new textile products and garments with innovative and high-tech properties for a wide range of applications, from Sports, Fashion and Decoration to Protection, Transport and Health. Nanochemistry and nanotechnology have taken on a leading role in the textile and clothing industry in the creation and development of these new products. These sciences have made it possible to develop new nanomaterials whose physical and chemical properties can be carefully controlled, such as graphene, carbon nanotubes, silica nanoparticles, titanium dioxide and metallic nanoparticles. By incorporating these nanomaterials into textile substrates, it is possible to give garments new added-value functionalities, such as self-cleaning properties, water and dirt repellency, thermochromism, protection against ultraviolet radiation, flame retardancy, anti-microbial properties, among others. On the other hand, reducing the size of the materials incorporated into textiles makes it possible to provide greater comfort, lightness and flexibility, without compromising the look and feel. This lecture will present various examples of the contribution of nanochemistry to the production of a new generation of functional and intelligent textiles that are revolutionising our society.
Lecturer: Clara Pereira
Target audience: 9th to 12th grade students
Materials needed: Data-show and table for demonstrations
Activity: Catalysis and catalysts are concepts that form part of the 12 Principles of Green Chemistry and, consequently, their contribution to the sustainable development of society is currently accepted as one of the great goals and challenges of today's chemistry. Within the area of Catalysis and Catalysts, catalytic processes using heterogeneous (solid) catalysts stand out, which, when compared to homogeneous (liquid) catalysts, are typically more stable, are easily separated from the reaction medium and are reusable, allowing for the development of cleaner and more eco-sustainable chemical processes. This lecture will present the general principles of catalysis, the different types of catalytic reactions and catalysts, using various examples where their importance in sustainable development can be recognised: (i) heterogeneous catalytic processes - chemical catalysis - for the production of bioproducts and biofuels from the valorisation of biomass, as alternative products to those obtained from petroleum; (ii) catalytic processes activated by UV/visible radiation - photocatalysis - for the degradation of pollutants in water, making it possible to improve water quality, and (iii) electrocatalytic processes - electrocatalysis - for the production of clean energy: fuel cells.
Lecturer: Andreia Peixoto
Target audience: 9th to 12th grade students
Materials needed: Data-show and table for demonstrations
Activity: The massive use of fossil fuels that we have seen for many years now means that there may be a shortage in the future, which will have major consequences for society and the economy. At the same time, their large-scale use also leads to the emission of greenhouse gases into the environment (e.g. CO2 and water vapour), contributing to the climate change we are seeing today. It is therefore one of the great challenges of the 21st century to find alternative eco-sustainable fuels, known as green fuels. In this context, the production of biofuels from the different types of biomass that exist on the planet is one of the most promising alternatives. This lecture will present various examples of how different types of biomass and industrial waste can be used to produce biofuels, such as biodiesel.
Lecturer: Andreia Peixoto
Target audience: secondary school students
Materials needed: Data-show and table for demonstrations
Activity: Gels, liposomes, nanoemulsions and liquid crystals are examples of soft materials that are organised at the nano-scale. They are made up of molecules such as lipids, surfactants and polymers with fascinating self-aggregating properties. How and why are these nanomaterials formed? What is their structure on a microscopic scale? What are they used for? From formulating medicines and designing LCD screens to producing food and paints, advanced materials and nanotechnology, we'll see how the field of soft materials chemistry has been at the forefront of various technological innovations and has brought countless benefits to society.
Lecturer: Eduardo Marques
Target audience: secondary school students
Materials needed: Multimedia projector
Activity: Talk to the students about what nanotechnology and bionanotechnology are and what role chemistry plays in these new technologies. Presentation of some examples of products that have already been commercialised, as well as products under development, and discussion about the impact of nanotechnology on society today and in the future.
Lecturer: Eulália Pereira
Target audience: secondary school students
Materials needed: Multimedia projector
Activity: Molecular machines are molecules or molecular aggregates capable of performing a mechanical function in response to a physical or chemical stimulus. Inspired by biological systems, molecular machines are considered the future of nanotechnology, in applications ranging from high-performance molecular computers to nanorobots for medical applications.
Lecturer: Eulália Pereira
Activity: Science in general, and chemistry in particular, explore the "mysteries of nature" with their own approach and methodology. These approaches give the sciences a robustness and an impressive social and intellectual relevance. Life today would be almost unimaginable without science and its contributions to understanding the world and providing the basis for the technology we use to qualify our lives. Chemistry plays a special role in this context. Questions about "the book of nature" are not the end of man's questions and the intersection with other questions of a philosophical, artistic and religious nature is on the table. Alchemy, in the early days of chemistry, is an example of a somewhat 'explosive' combination of the scientific question and the religious and metaphysical question. From alchemy we move on to the contemporary view and a worldview where scientific questions and philosophical and religious questions can coexist and even be made compatible.
Lecturer: João Paiva
Duration: 25 minutes talk + 25 minutes questions
Target audience: 9th to 12th grade students
Materials needed: Video projector
Activity: In everyday life we use common, banal, more or less sophisticated/advanced materials. The chemistry, physics and technology associated with the production, development and knowledge of materials is fascinating! This topic is presented in a simple, interactive way (including practical demonstrations). It takes a direct, interrogative and provocative approach to knowledge of the properties, functionalities and practical application of a series of materials that we all think we know.
Lecturer: Luís Belchior Santos
Target audience: secondary school students
Materials needed: Video projector
Activity: We all know that water plays a fundamental role in life and in the environmental balance of our planet, where it exists in abundance in solid, liquid and gaseous states. This importance of water derives from its peculiar physical and chemical properties. The characteristics and consequences of these properties will be discussed, with particular emphasis on those arising from hydrogen bonds, both in liquid water and in solid water (ice).
Lecturer: Manuel João Monte
Target audience: 9th to 11th grade students
Materials needed: Data-show and table for demonstrations
Activity: Chemistry has an unquestionable and decisive importance in areas as diverse as research into resources and the application of products, from energy production to the pharmaceutical industry, from agriculture to art. As part of this publicity initiative, some simple experiments will be carried out that demonstrate the presence of chemistry in our daily lives.
Lecturer: Maria das Dores Ribeiro da Silva
Researcher: Vera Freitas
Target audience: secondary school students
Materials needed: Data-show and table for demonstrations
Activity: Understanding the structure of matter has made it possible to create new and useful materials, some of which are absolutely essential to modern society and its future evolution. The scientific method leads to an understanding of the formation of matter and the production of substances with the desired properties. In the 20th century, chemistry developed without proper critical monitoring of the side effects of many products on the environment, the biosphere or human health, with frequent misuse of means that are not indispensable to life. The importance of reconciling humanity's ongoing needs with the protection of the environment and the Earth's ability to provide for these needs is now better recognised. Chemistry and Chemical Technology play an important role in this process, but interdisciplinarity and multidisciplinarity are emerging as extremely important concepts. In the 21st century, chemistry has an enormous challenge: to convey to society the urgent need to rethink its current position with a view to sustainability. It is up to mankind to know how to use intelligence and common sense to combine the knowledge available with the application it makes of it.
Lecturer: Maria das Dores Ribeiro da Silva
Researcher: Ana Luísa Ribeiro da Silva
Target audience: secondary school students
Materials needed: Video projector
Activity: Creating a more sustainable future necessarily involves finding new ways of producing materials with useful properties, or mitigating the environmental impact of secondary products, preferably by transforming them into added-value products. The use of catalysts plays a vital role in achieving these goals, but as new catalysts are developed it is time to ask which is the most suitable for a given application, and whether we can design new catalysts based on the knowledge gained from previous experiments. In this context, artificial intelligence methods make it possible to process a large amount of information, providing directions for improving the design and optimisation of new catalytic processes. This talk focuses on the presentation of artificial intelligence methods in the context of analysing data on known catalysts and their importance in developing sustainable methods of producing new chemical products as well as mitigating polluting emissions.
Lecturer: Maria Natália D. S. Cordeiro
Researcher: Filipe Teixeira
Target audience: secondary school students
Materials needed: Video projector
Activity: This lecture aims to show the role that a computer can play in chemistry, by realistically simulating experiments that are carried out in the laboratory and those that are impossible/difficult/dangerous to carry out. It also aims to show students images of simulations of atomic systems, making them see matter as it really is on an atomic scale. This activity promises to be a window into the invisible world of atoms and molecules.
Lecturer: Pedro Fernandes
Target audience: secondary school students
Materials needed: Video projector
Activity: Food is a science that has evolved a lot over time. Initially there was a philosophical-metaphysical conception (classical medical philosophy) of "food" based on the doctrine proposed by Claudius Galen (a Roman physician and philosopher from 129 AD) known as the theory of the four humours. Until then, the three components of cookery, dietetics and medicine were seen together. From the 18th century onwards, with the affirmation of the natural sciences, scientific knowledge introduced some rationality by separating these three components. This led to the development of a new concept of "Food Quality" focused essentially on three aspects: nutritional; sensory; food safety (chemical and microbiological).
Lecturer: Victor Freitas
Target audience: secondary school students
Materials needed: Video projector
Activity: Colour is one of the most extraordinary natural phenomena that has accompanied man throughout his evolution, playing an important role in society, both from a communication point of view and in guiding the way we dress and eat, as well as triggering a wide range of emotions. For these and other reasons, colour has been intensively studied and, in general, results from the interaction of (visible) light with matter involving physical (e.g. light scattering), chemical (presence of compounds with chromogenic groups) and physical-chemical (e.g. iridescence) phenomena.
Lecturer: Victor Freitas
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