In partnership with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Unicamp's Faculty of Chemical Engineering (FEQ) began, this Monday (22), a series of workshops that aim to introduce, to young people in high school from public schools, essential concepts of chemistry and materials engineering.
For a week, leaders of the MIT-Brazil Global Teaching Labs from 2024, alongside professors and monitors from the Department of Materials and Bioprocess Engineering (DEMbio) at FEQ, will guide a group of around 30 students from public schools in the study of polymers — a material widely used in the production of parts for the automotive industry, packaging for the food industry, healthcare, construction coatings, among other applications.
The group of students will evaluate the role of the polymer in the sports industry, more specifically in football. Students will perform a sort of dissection of a football to check how much the polymer contributes to the equipment having the desired characteristics for the function for which it was created.
“We wouldn’t want it to get wet in games played in the rain, for example. Not even if it bounced like a basketball”, explains the leader of MIT-Brazil, Thalyta Santiago, who is also a doctoral student at FEQ. The idea, according to Thalyta, is to know the types of application for each type of polymer.
The evaluation will extend to other products in the chain, such as players' uniforms and equipment used in physiotherapy processes or in athlete surgeries. The group will also work with so-called additive manufacturing — which are materials and equipment that contain different types of polymers in their composition and that are found in a football stadium, like plastic bottles, for example. There will also be workshops on 3D printers in which students will learn to draw and learn about project management.
“We set up an environment as if it were a summer camp, with practical activities, with theory involved. It is active teaching, in which students are able to retain the content more”, he explains. Thalyta Santiago, who works on the project alongside MIT-Brazil leader, Katharina Fransen.
Polymer in everyday life
Teacher Mariana Agostini de Moraes says that the DEMbio has been working on the issue of polymers in both teaching and research, and that the projectMIT-Brazil meets these objectives. She recalled that, in addition to Unicamp, the program was also applied by MIT at USP and at the Federal University of Alfenas, in Minas Gerais.
“The objective is to bring students closer to the areas of science and technology based on a very simple topic, which is football — a subject with which Brazilians have a lot of affinity — and to check how much the polymer is applied in our daily lives. day, in our activities”, said Mariana Moraes.
For professor Marina Cosate, also from DEMbio, the dynamics of the workshops and the subject have attracted the attention of students. “We are seeing a lot of happy faces; committed, interested people, carrying out their tasks with full commitment. I think they are really enjoying it”, said the teacher.
“For me, everything is new. It's always good to do practical tasks like this. I'm really enjoying it”, said Ion Mateus, a student at the Unicamp Technical College (Cotuca), while carrying out compression and mechanical resistance tests on the fabrics of a football. The workshops run until January 26th.
