The event “Explora os Materiais” continues to attract and to surprise secondary school students. This year, the event organised by NEMat brought together 2000 secondary school who had the opportunity to learn more about Materials Engineering, namely: how are flexion tests carried out, what are composites, what composites can be found in objects, the simplicity of creating a gold nanoparticles sample.

The success of this initiative is essentially due to the active participation of students. According to Inês Pinho and Paulo Ramiro, members of the organisation, “the feedback we get from secondary schools is that students really like this event. The experiences are very practical and allow students to learn a lot”, stresses Inês Pinho. “Although this year’s edition was more difficult to plan, due to space limitations, we had a much more positive feedback from the participant schools”, she adds.

This event has a wide geographical reach, as Paulo Ramiro explains. “At this moment, we manage to reach the whole country. We were contacted by a school in Vila Nova de Gaia and we managed to have participants from Viana do Alentejo, Setúbal, Torres Novas and Peniche. We want to keep it that way”. “I believe that this event helps to attract more students to Materials Engineering course”, says Inês Pinho. “Nowadays, most people choose our course as 1st option. We want to believe that this event has contributed to that”, she adds.