The Science Castle Seminar is a place for students and faculty who want to present more advanced research to receive guidance on presentations and seminars that provide tips on how to get started with their research.

In this Science Castle Seminar, we held the "Seeds of Research Seminar: Learn the basics of research through PET bottle rocket research! 〜Let's learn the basic flow and concept of research while conducting research for one month.

At the beginning of this seminar, we introduced the famous words of Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), the English natural philosopher who discovered the law of universal gravitation, binomial theorem, etc.

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of the Giants."

If I could see farther, it was because I was on the shoulders of giants."

Here, "giants" is a metaphor for "discoveries accumulated by our predecessors," and the word as a whole means "new discoveries were made because of the discoveries accumulated by our predecessors. We introduced this idea because it is an important idea to know when conducting research.

What our predecessors have discovered so far is generally accumulated in the form of papers. Therefore, this seminar focused on how to find and read such papers.

 

Seminar Contents

PET bottle rockets are known as a familiar and easy-to-create research subject, and are suitable as teaching materials for physical phenomena such as "action-reaction". In addition, since there are many actual researchers and examples of their work at other schools, it is easy to conduct a literature search, which is important for research, and to formulate hypotheses.

This time, we will actually conduct a month-long research on this PET bottle rocket theme. The participants will be able to experience a series of flow (investigate the contents, formulate a hypothesis, verify the hypothesis, and formulate a new hypothesis). Since the students will be able to experience the series of steps (investigate the contents, formulate a hypothesis, verify the hypothesis, and formulate a new hypothesis), they will be able to continue their experiments at school after the seminar, and they will also be able to pursue their original research themes based on the research know-how they have gained.

The seminar will include the following

schedule	Location	Contents
April 17 - April 23	each school	Investigation of principles related to PET bottle rockets
April 24 (17:30-18:30)	RIVANES Osaka Office	Creation of PET bottle rocket and research plan
April 25-May 7	each school	PET bottle rocket launch experiment
May 8 (16:30-18:30)	Yodogawa riverbed	Rocket Launch Contest and Report of Research Results *If it rains on May 8, a debriefing of the research results will be held at the business office.

Venue:
1) RIVANES Osaka Office: Seminar Room, 3F MD Kitahama Building, 1-5-7 Kitahama, Chuo-ku, Osaka City, Osaka Prefecture, Japan
(2) Yodogawa riverside park: Meet at the west exit of the Hankyu Nakatsu Station ticket gate (16:15)

Seeds of Research Seminar begins! Talks by senior researchers

One-on-one, asking about how to do the experiment.

• I participated in the seminar because I have been conducting research on space technology and was interested in PET bottle rocket research as part of that research. The knowledge I gained in this seminar was meaningful because it may lead to my current research. Also,I am glad that the students were able to learn about the research process and the tentative and research plan. (Participant)

• I thought it was great that it talked about the core of research methodology (so much so that it is not even found in university lectures). I think this seminar is valuable in that it offers a total package from classroom lectures on how to conduct research to practical application. I hope they will continue to do so. (Dr. Junichi Takeuchi, Renaissance Osaka High School)

1) Presentation Dojo

This event is open to middle and high school students who want to present and brush up on their research. Several schools will come together to present their research. Presenters will receive advice on their research.

(2) Consultation Service for Proposal Research

This program is for those who wish to consult on the research they are working on. This is a preliminary meeting to consult with researchers from universities and companies in fields similar to the research you are working on. We will confirm and organize your research background and the content of your consultation.