Kind²

Unique way to make science!

INTRODUCIONFor many years, art and science have been in opposite sides, where science represents the brain and art represents the heart, but we noticed that for a body work perfectly, the brain and the heart need to work together. The challenge “Turning STEM into STEAM” tells us to thing about the union of art and science.So, our team started with simple questions: what means the A in STEAM and how it contributes to science?THE A IN STEAM...The “A” in this word means a lot more than a letter, the art is an important part of our formation as citizens and humans. Art is a language that more than others can transmit messages and emotions with clarity, breaking the language barrier that exists between the countries.We can see this aspect in music that can transmit emotions and messages by melody, even though its lyrics are in another idiom. An example of this is the “cultural party music's” that are like most of countries since before the globalization, these melodies are always composed by strong beats from drums or similar instruments, because they awaken emotions of cheer in the human brain, you can see it in Brazil, México, African countries, and many others, the melodies are all similar. This is a little demonstration of the power of art.Art alone can do much, so is science, then why not join these pieces and complete the puzzle? Tha art is capable of share information to many people, even if they are kids, adolescents, adults or even seniors, because it’s universal.I CAN’T SEE ITNow that we understood the importance of art, we need to know what makes impossible information to make part of our daily life. During our discussions and searches, we made research with local youth, so our team confirmed a problem: people didn’t identify herself with the data that was shared.In our research 75% of the interviewed related that they see scientific data as something distant from the reality they live, and because of this, these young people said they were not very interested in these data, even though they represent important advances.The simplest way to memorize or be interested something is when you use this daily and can see it, when we are into the knowledge. However, when comes at scientific data, many people don’t see their daily life in the data, what makes it irrelevant to them.But how turn it relevant? The answer is in culture that is constantly part of our life. Most times, the scientific information shows a global view, and they’re mostly in English, this ends up distancing people from this type of information.CULTURE AND REPRESENTATIVITYThen we can understand the importance of representativity, because through its scientific data can captivate more people. Most of the information disseminated reaches other countries in English, the most used language, so even with the translations some meanings end up being lost, because they have some connection with the culture of the country where this data came from.Examples of this situation are observed in study of science in different places, to see this we can look at the study of chemistry in China. The periodic table was created in 1829 by a German chemist and obviously it was made in western alphabet, what dificulta its study to oriental people, but in China the periodic table underwent a translation that involved with the country's alphabet and its meaning, since in Chinese each symbol has different meanings, so if you study the table, you will realize that depending on the type of the chemical element a different character will be assigned to his name, for example: if this element is a solid metal, it will have the radical 金 (golden) in its name.What we are trying to say is that people learn more when they see their day-to-day in the Datas, but this isn’t possible if their culture isn’t involved with this information.If Science is for everyone, it must be for every culture too.MIX IT TOGETHER!In our project we brought from art its ability to overcome linguistic and cultural barriers, especially with music, our main instrument of study, from science we brought knowledge and then we added a pinch of culture to both.During our research, as we said, we interviewed some young people and, in their entirety, they said about how music decorated with the theme of a class at school, helped them to understand what was being said, because it is a quality of art to transport you to other time to understand what is going on. So why not apply this to science? We think it's something that should be applied, and we started this idea with a post from NASA itself, which turned an image from the James Webb telescope into music! And this post reached and interested many people around the world, because the sound of the universe attracted them and aroused their curiosity to read the description of the post and who knows even eventually about this new technology and the advancement of science. That's what art does, it awakens our senses.But it still lacked a special touch, the culture. So, we thought about the Brazilian indigenous people who for a long time tried to adapt to the way of learning and understanding the colonizers' world, while having a rich culture that should be valued. A report that we found while walking our way said that during a project to teach astronomy, more specifically the phases of the moon, to indigenous children in Brazil, many of them said that they had learned the phases of the moon or understood them in different ways that were related to their culture of origin, but they refused to say it out of fear of the judgment they might suffer. So that's why we defend culture as part of science.Finally, by putting everything together we have a method where these three pillars are put together so that the structure between science and the community is built. To design what we have in mind, let's create two situations:First SituationIn Brazil, a physics teacher arrives to teach about the stars, he presents data from NASA about the constellations, but only with the most famous constellations: Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, among others. He passes on the content; the students take notes, and he leaves.Second situationIn Brazil, a physics teacher arrives to teach about astronomy in the classroom and he proposes a different activity, he shows an image of the constellations seen from South America to the students and suggests problem situations such as: “Observing these constellations, what use are they? can they have in the daily lives of indigenous peoples? And what figures do they look like?” Students engage in the activity, complete it, and then the teacher leaves.Analyzing the situations, we can see the difference in how this content is passed on, the first situation is unfortunately the most common, in which Brazilian art or culture is not valued, in the second situation the teacher makes the students understand the importance of constellations for the indigenous people and for the whole world, so knowledge comes into contact with the student making him feel connected and really interested in science, in this case astronomy.But this is not only valid for the classroom, but national science institutions also need to value their culture and art and, as China did with the periodic table, bring this information to the reach of the population using social media to disseminate posts that arouse our curiosity and senses, with art. Thus, we wanted to encourage countries to have their own way of doing science.

From KinD²

Hello everyone, we are Kind! We are a duo formed by two students from Brazil and we discovered this hackaton by chance, but it was an amazing experience that we fell into. We appreciate the opportunity to participate and that more institutions are inspired to create more projects like this.
PS: Sorry if there are any English mistakes ;)

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