Laborabus is a science truck from Maine that travels each year to different sectors of the department to introduce science concepts to school children. It is a real mobile laboratory where many educational experiments can be carried out.
Roaming from March 18 to April 19, 2024 with the animation L'air et le vide, Laborabus stops several times: La Suze-sur-Sarthe, Cérans-Foulletourte, Pontvallain, Le Lude and La Flèche. Currently, 500 elementary school students and 112 middle school students have benefited from this activity, including 200 students in La Fleche.
The project targets students from CM1 to 3H. Each session lasts just over an hour and allows, through about ten experiments carried out by a scientific facilitator, to explain the concepts of vacuum and air. Air and emptiness are not easy to explain, because neither can be seen and yet, they are there. The whole point is to do something they can't see by doing something they can see!
laughs Maine Science host Stephane Beauvais.
Younger children marvel at experiments such as bladder bursting, which consists of deflating air into a tube inflating a balloon that ends up exploding. We try to answer their questions by focusing on very specific concepts such as how a plane can fly, and why windows are round. We explain to them the principle of atmospheric pressure.”
He finishes.
