Soil studies won Kiihdytin hiukkasen – physics competition organised by the Ģֱ
In the competition, groups from five different upper secondary schools got access to employ instrumentation in the Accelerator Laboratory of the Ģֱ, just like professional researchers. After their first visit to the laboratory in January, groups identified their research topics and completed research proposals to emulate standard protocols needed to obtain access to infrastructure together with their tutors.
Experiments were conducted in two days in March, before the COVID19 pandemic closed the laboratory.
What is the best soil?
Groups from Helsinki Upper Secondary School of Languages, Jyväskylän Lyseo, Karhula high school, Kimpisen campus from Lappeenranta and Sammon keskuslukio high school from Tampere participated in the competition.
In their evaluations, the jury paid attention to enthuasm, scientific thinking and initiative, while it was also important that the proposal the final report were prepared in scientific manner. Unanimously, the jury selected Kimpisen campus as the winner. Group included Roosa Örså, Roosa Partanen, Annukka Raukko and Jannika Hirvikallio as members and Eveliina Tuosa as their teacher.
The group is interested in physics and science in general. They had collected several different samples of soil with the aim of determining their elemental abundances. One sample was collected in their visit to CERN, Geneva, where the group had chance to visit before the competition.
Soil samples were investigated employing the Pelletron accelerator. It turned out that the traditional homegrown soil from compost clearly beat the commercial soils, at least when it comes to number of important elements and corresponding abundances in the soil.
“Pelletron is typically employed in applied fundamental research, but we also do R&D for companies, study thin films and help identifying art forgeries”, tells Adjunct Professor of physics Mikko Laitinen, the tutor of the winning group.
“Nevertheless, this kind of study of soil was never conducted before, thus it was of great interest for us as well.”
“Now also companies producing soil for flowers can contact and ask us to determine what their product is made of since now we now how to do it, thanks to group from Kimpisen campus and the Kiihdytin hiukkasen –competition”, laughs Laitinen.
Their winning work produced an article that was published in –magazine, an achievement that was also hailed by the jury.
Honorary mention was given to a group from the Helsinki Upper Secondary School of Languages, who explored half-lives of isotopes at the IGISOL mass separator.
Competition will be repeated
Plans to repeat the Kiihdytin hiukkasen –competition in two years time are in place.
“The competition has been a great journey and experience for the researchers in the laboratory. It is refreshing and rewarding to be able to provide such an experience for young talents. Unfortunately, we could not organise award ceremony due to COVID-19 restrictions as planned, but let’s celebrate virtually”, says university researcher Janne Pakarinen who coordinated the competition.
Kiihdytin hiukkasen –competition has been supported by Tieteen tiedotus ry, Opetuhallitus and the Ģֱ.
Link to competitions's web pages:
More information:
Janne Pakarinen phone: 040 805 4900 email: janne.pakarinen@jyu.fi
Communications Specialist Tanja Heikkinen, tanja.s.heikkinen@jyu.fi, tel. 358 50 581 8351
The Faculty of Mathematics and Science:
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