The Israeli IRRESISTIBLE team was honored to present its exhibition during the final IRRESISTIBLE meeting in Kiel (See above article for details about this exhibition.).
How was this exhibition received by visitors? What follows is a summary of our answer to this question, based on our "visitor-watching" experience.
Many students, especially the younger ones, enjoyed putting together puzzle about renewable energy, and seemed to know a surprising variety of renewable energy sources that were presented in the puzzle (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Shelley Rap, and Israeli teacher with a school students from The Netherland:
Putting together puzzle about renewable energy
Many visitors, of all ages, seemed to enjoy experimenting with the small solar-powered cars that were part of the exhibition (Figure 2). The wide variety of different ways that they investigated the effect of light on solar cells indicated a high level of creativity.
We were surprised to discover that the use of QR technology, which is very common and accepted in Israel, was not common with our visitors. Most of the visitors did not have QR app available on their smartphones and -- as a result -- were not able to watch the 4 videos that were part of our exhibit. In addition, the few visitors who did watch these videos found it difficult to hear the sound tracks because of the relatively high noise level in the exhibition hall.
Figure 2: Children explore the effect of light on solar-powered cars
The videos presented the pros and cons of using perovskite-based solar windows from a variety of perspectives (Figure 3): a parent involved with the parent-teacher organization at her child's school, a sociologist, a nature activist and a chemistry teachers. These different perspectives presented to assist the viewer to make decisions regarding a complex issue: under what conditions, if any, would they agree to the use of an innovative technology? But the above two technical and technological failures unfortunately prevented the visitors from understanding our exhibition and from achieving the goals we set for our exhibition.