Nobel day

The second day of the Swedish Japanese Youth Science Program (SJYSP) week started off at the Nobel Museum where the students from the two countries got to meet each other for the first time.
We started of with a presentation of the life and work of Alfred Nobel and continued with a workshop  about research and creativity.

The students got to work together in groups to solve problems and working with group dynamics to find out the cornerstones of a good working group in any expertise - diversity. They also got to think about their own role in the group and how that might affect further group works and research opportunities.

Before the lunch at Bistro Nobel, the Swedish students showed their guests around the museum and they got to explore the Nobel Prizes and all around them but also got to know each other.

The afternoon continued in the essence of Nobel when the students got to visit the City Hall of Stockholm and got a guided tour of the Blue Hall where the Nobel Banquet is held as well as got to see the kitchen and everything "behind the scenes".

After the visit it was time for the Japanese guests to say goodbye to their Swedish hosts and travel by boat to see the beautiful islands such as "Skepparholmen" and "Djurgården" (translated as "sailor holm" and "animal farm") where many museums and the amusement park "Gröna Lund" (green meadow) is located.

We continued to walk in town and visited a traditional old-fashioned café for swedish fika and ate dinner in the north-east part of time at T.G.I Fridays.

After another visit at the supermarket for evening snacks after a long but interesting and exciting day, the students got to try the spaghetti-marshmallow challenge to try out their new knowledge of group work. It was a very appreciated contest with many twists that ended in a presentation of prestanda and demands. In the end everyone got to try out some very typical Swedish candies such as "lösgodis" (lose candy that you pick and mix by yourself), kexchoklad (biscuits layered with chocolate), Ahlgrens bilar (car-shaped soft candy) and milk chocolate.

Around midnight, we suddenly got a report saying that there was an aurora in Stockholm. This is very rare in Stockholm due to all the light from the city. This night, however was extremely rare (this happens about every ten years) and you could see very clearly. The students were really excited about this and we had a spontane lecture in physics explaining the phenomene.