Safe and Sustainable Materials at European Researchers’ Night
How can we describe properties of materials, and how to materials get different properties – from hard, smooth, metallic spoons to soft, flexible baby spoons, for example?
On 26 September 2025, BNN had a hands-on station at European Researchers’ Night, held as “Life is Science” at Universalmuseum Joanneum in the center of Graz, Austria.
Amid a sea of fascinating stations in the lobby of the museum complex, BNN asked visitors to reach inside our “magic box” to see if they can recognize any objects inside simply by feeling and not looking. Children were asked to describe the materials and write their descriptions on our board. Then, after learning the basic concepts of SSbD – thinking of safety and sustainability over the entire life cycle of a material or product – those who were interested wrote down suggestions for improving safety and sustainability of materials to decorate our tree. We were thrilled with the results!
We then explained to parents and other adults attending about how we use SSbD in projects such as NABIHEAL (showing examples of bandages and other wound-healing materials in our box), PLANETS (using examples of baby spoons with plasticizers as well as materials with flame retardants), SSbD4CheM (using examples of Matchbox cars!).
We were thrilled to have roughly 60 people participating in our hands-on activity at an event with 750 visitors!