Fisicarte - 1st place – National Contest ”Science at School”

I´m writing to report an activity included in our school project – Fisicarte – which is related to your super original and creative software Algodoo.

We work in a middle size school that is organized like this: 11 primary schools with students from 1st till 4th grade and 1 basic/comprehensive school with students from 5th till 9th grade.

This year a group of teachers created a project including 85 4th grade students and 30 8th and 9th grade voluntary students. We’ve organized several experimental activities related to Physics and during five weeks we included Algodoo in some of those activities. All teachers and students loved the experience of discovering and working with the software.

We’re experiencing a great time at our school because we´ve recently won the 1st price of the national contest – SCIENCE AT SCHOOL – which is organized by very important Portuguese institutions: Illido Pinho Foundation (http://fundacaoip.locais.net), Espirito Santo Bank (http://www.bes.pt) and the Ministry of Education (http://www.min-edu.pt).

At some point in the project we asked the students to write a letter to the Algodoo creator about what ever they were feeling. This is what a student in the 4th grade wrote:

"Dear Algodoo creators,

Taking part in contests has always fascinated us. And if these contests reveal realities far beyond our imagination, we support them with great interest. The teachers who directed/organized the presentation of these incredible experiments were just amazing. Thus, what was an unknown world has become a tempting and magnificent field: we were speechless by some experiments such as the anti-gravity man or the robot dance. After all we saw, everything seems easier and our wish to go further is growing bigger.

It’s your duty to afford young people experiments, which arouse their curiosity and renew their inventive spirit.

Thank you! It was fantastic!"

Thanks and congratulations for your work!

Pedro Isodoro
Physics and Chemistry School Teacher
Cluster of Schools of Carregal Do Sal

July 27, 2010