« Un chercheur, une manip » : une idée féconde

Au Palais de la Découverte, le récent concept de médiation « Un chercheur, une manip » permet aux visiteurs d’être les témoins des plus récentes découvertes et de rencontrer leurs auteurs, enrichit l’établissement de présentations nouvelles et nourrit l’espoir de favoriser la naissance de vocations scientifiques : le responsable rappelle ici les principes fondateurs de ce programme, dresse un bilan et pointe les perspectives de développement.At the ’Palais de la Découverte’ (Palace of Discovery), the recent mediation concept ’A researcher, an experiment’ enables visitors to witness the most recent discoveries and to meet those who made them, enriches the institution with new presentations and fuels hope of encouraging new scientific vocations: in this article the person in charge recalls the founding principles of this programme, presents an assessment and indicates the perspectives for development

How to Simulate the Surface of a Cometary Nucleus for Public Science Demonstrations

International audienceTo celebrate and appropriately illustrate the rendezvous of the European Rosetta spacecraft with comet 67P/Churyumov– Gerasimenko and the landing of Philae on the surface of the comet’s nucleus on 12 November 2014, the French science museum Palais de la Découverte developed and presented a new and original demonstration. The experiment simulates the behaviour of a cometary surface in a vacuum and shows the formation of jet-like features. We explain here how to prepare an analogue to cometary material from porous ices and carbon, how to approximately reproduce the cometary environment at low pressure, temperature and solar illumination, and how to present the experiment at a public science demonstration