Edutainment in the Magic Tower : Environmental awareness as a lifelong learning process

The type and nature of the environmental p roblems we are facing currently require an adaptive environmental education that is a lifelong learning process rather th an a matter of formal schooling. The Magic Tower Science Career Orientation Center and Museum at the E szterházy Ká roly University Eger has been committed s ince its foundation to promote lif elong learning, and establish , in general , an atypical, informal , and non - formal science educational culture in Nor thern Hungary. One of the target areas of the Tower are the current environmental issues faced by the humanity. In the recent years, the Tower has launched s everal self - paced and inquiry - based science programs that intended to raise motivation towards envi ronmental sciences, and to create responsible individuals capable to identify environmental issues, engage in problem solving, and take efficient action. These programs were aimed at audiences of different age and education level, ranging from preschool ch il dren, through secondary school students , to parents and non - specialized researchers. In the present communication, we summarize some of these activities, along with their achievements

A diffusion-induced transition in the phase separation of binary fluid mixtures subjected to a temperature ramp

Demixing of binary fluids subjected to slow temperature ramps shows repeated waves of nucleation which arise as a consequence of the competition between generation of supersaturation by the temperature ramp and relaxation of supersaturation by diffusive transport and flow. Here, we use an advection-reaction-diffusion model to study the oscillations in the weak- and strong-diffusion regime. There is a sharp transition between the two regimes, which can only be understood based on the probability distribution function of the composition rather than in terms of the average composition. We argue that this transition might be responsible for some yet unclear features of experiments, like the appearance of secondary oscillations and bimodal droplet size distributions.Comment: 6 pages, 3 color figure