"Night of museums"

One, two, three... Comm check!

On 20 May, the Museum of History of Science and Technology of JINR hosted the annual educational event "Night of Museums". 10 hours of non-stop scientific and educational events, more than 200 participants - citizens and guests of Dubna aged 0 to 80 years.

In the last issue of our newspaper we talked about the exhibition. Today, in continuation of the topic, we are publishing an overview of the events of this massive event.

The entire museum programme was built into a single thematic canvas: connection.

The three-hour excursion "Architecture of the Institute Dubna: Connection of times" launched the campaign. Together with a guide from our museum, the members of the excursion turned over the pages of the history of scientific, Institute Dubna. The participants admired the old cottages and in the composition they felt the town-planning idea of the garden city embodied near the banks of the Volga. They learnt about the cultural centres of Dubna, present and former ones, the monuments of both the Stalinist Empire style (the administrative building of JINR and the Cultural Centre "Mir") and of the architectural modernism: swimming pool "Archimedes", Hotel "Dubna-1", the International Conference Hall... A particular attention was drawn to the original ideas of Bulgarian architects that presented Dubna with two whole city blocks, with an unexpected southern flavor in the 1960s and 1970s. The members of the excursion learnt about the history and architectural features of the Public Library named after D.I.Blokhintsev, built in the Bulgarian version of modernism. Despite the reconstruction, the library managed to preserve the harmonious combination of beauty, functionality and coziness thought out by the architect... We hope that the tourists will remember visiting another monument of Bulgarian modernism, the Hotel "Dubna" for a long time. Decorated with wavy decor, it organically blended into the advantageous geographical context and became the architectural dominant of the park area. Going inside and passing by the panoramic sgraffito of the hotel hall, symbolizing the expanses of the Volga and then climbing the spiral staircase to the 3rd floor, the sightseers examined the room where A.A.Voznesensky and V.S.Vysotsky had usually stayed.

Excursion "Architecture of the Institute Dubna: connection of times". Hall of the Hotel "Dubna"

The museum lecture hall hosted a presentation of the exhibition-comic strip "Connection: seven views on communication". Employees of the Public Library, the JINR Museum and the Foundation "Future Time" participated in the preparation of the exhibition. The exhibition was based on scientific comics. A team of illustrators, together with scientific popularizers created comics about iconic Russian inventions, scientific and technological achievements of our great compatriots, united by the topic "Connection and Communications". The co-authors of the exhibition are Dubna teenagers, it was them to reveal their vision of the concept of "communication". With the help of curators, they learned to formulate ideas, to find forms for their implementation, to convey the idea through stories, objects, video and sound. The children learnt about the collection of monuments of science and technology, explored the concept of "communication", prepared exhibits, created projects. To fill the exhibition, the children used an audio installation about the development of communication tools, a video installation about the fragility of our life, comics about parent-child relationships, a visualization of an investigation about the white spots of our city, an art object about the red threads of communication between the JINR Member States, an interactive installation about letters as bridges that bring us closer to each other and a pop-up bridge as a symbol of communication and connection. The exhibition will be open until 20 June.

The quest-orientation "City in contact" was organized and conducted by the museum together with the centre "Druzhba". 37 teams that consisted of children, adults and parents with children participated in this exciting and informative local history game. Participants on foot, on scooters and bicycles traveled around their hometown. The quest consisted of 17 checkpoints and a route between them. At the checkpoints, a short story sounded and it was proposed to answer the quiz question. The teams had to study monuments, inscriptions, to make calculations, to solve puzzles, to find hidden points, to remember history, to look for answers in the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements. The questions demanded patience, erudition and ingenuity from the participants. In general, it turned out to be an unforgettable walk through the Institute part of the city - amazing places, solving mysteries, new knowledge.

In the halls of the main exposition of the museum, two excursion sessions were held on the topic "Scientific Dubna: connection of events", where the basic milestones in the history of the first laboratories of Dubna and JINR were highlighted.

The programme continued with a demonstration of experiences and experiments "Nikola Tesla and his dreams of wireless communication." Young and adult participants of the "Night of Museums" were shown 15 spectacular electrical experiments concerning the names of N.Tesla and R.Van de Graaf. Some of the experiments were demonstrated in the dark. Spectacular and somewhat dangerous experiments caused mass enthusiasm and a wave of questions from a young audience ... Experiments with plasma balls and a Tesla coil were accompanied by facts of an amazing biography of their engineer.

Afterwards, a children's intellectual and entertaining team game on the topic "Communication. Not the internet alone" was held. Four teams of inquisitive children and a team of parents clashed in a battle of wits, erudition, intuition and quick wits. The questions included antique messengers, African tam-tom, symbols of the quipu knot letter, pigeon mail, telegraph, telephone ...

And the final event was the intellectual game for three adult teams "Find a connection in 1 minute", also marked by vivid emotions and sports passion.

The JINR Museum of History of Science and Technology thanks everyone that took part in the event "Night of Museums". We are waiting for you next year!

Anastasia ZLOTNIKOVA,
photo by Igor LAPENKO