Multi-dimensional CorrDays
April 24th is the Corrosion Awareness Day. Silesian University of Technology, and in particular scientists from the Faculty of Chemistry who decided to organize CorrDays for the third time joined the celebrations.
The purpose of Corrosion Awareness Day is to draw attention to the hazards and problems that result from the corrosion of materials and the enormous losses that this phenomenon causes.
“-We all know what corrosion is. It is, after all, a social problem – the degradation of what is in our environment and generates huge losses. At our Faculty, we deal with this issue from the scientific point of view, which is why for the third time we decided to organize CorrDays to make the public aware that corrosion affects each of us.” - explains the Dean of the Faculty of Chemistry Prof. Dr Hab. Eng. Wojciech Simka.
The event is getting bigger and bigger every year. This year it was held for the first time for two days.
- “I am proud of the team that organizes it. We come from Electrochemistry Group, where we deal with corrosion process research, but also anti-corrosion protection. I am glad, first of all, that this event is interesting not only for students and doctoral students of our University, but also for young people from secondary schools. We would like to thank the companies we work with on corrosion every day, and now they have become CorrDays partners. We also have support from the European Corrosion Federation, which is a very big success and thanks to the fact that it promotes our event, entries from abroad are received for competitions that we organize”.
Traditionally, on the occasion of CorrDays, a photo and visual contest were also organised. On the first day of the event, we met the winners, and the participants could admire all the awarded works at the exhibition. The first place in the photo competition was taken by Kamil Kasprzycki for the photo “The Railway of Things,” and in the art competition Anita Wojciuch for the work “Corrosion will always find itself in nature.” A special distinction was also awarded by the Association of Chemical Industry Engineers and Technicians (SITPChem), awarding Pola Czech’s work “Rust attacks.”
- “We are very pleased with the attendance and the level of our competitions. We received more than 70 entries for photography. It is basically international in nature, because the photos were sent to us, among others, by participants from France and Pakistan. 10 people applied to art competition. In the case of the latter, this time not entire classes competed, but students applied individually.” - says Dr. Eng. Marta Wala-Kapica, organizer of CorrDays.
On the first day, the participants could also get acquainted with the presentation of Mankiewicz and nLab companies at their stands, as well as listen to the popular science lecture “Corrosion our Daily,” delivered by Dr Eng. Agnieszka Brojanowska from the Faculty of Materials Engineering of the Warsaw University of Technology. A novelty in this year’s edition of the event were two-day workshops, which immediately met with interest of students and doctoral students.
- “As a novelty in the program of our event, we are very pleased with the attendance. The participants could get acquainted with the methods of producing anti-corrosion coatings and testing their properties. We are helped by two companies that have measuring equipment – nLab and Technosolutions.” – adds Dr Eng. Marta Wala-Kapica.
- “I have not had any experience with electrochemistry so far, and I wanted to acquire it very much and use it in my future projects, so I am glad that I took part in the workshop. They were great, thanks to the condensed knowledge I received.” - explains Julia Kolasa, PhD student from the Faculty of Biomedical Engineering of the Silesian University of Technology.
The participants also had the opportunity to listen to Dr Eng. Maciej Sowa concerning plasma electrolytic oxidation (PEO).
- “Before the workshop, we wanted to introduce participants to the most developed research topic in our laboratory, which are anode methods of surface treatment of metals.” - says Dr Eng. Maciej Sowa, who together with Agata Kołkowska were guests of the podcast of the Silesian University of Technology “Let’s talk about science”, which concerned corrosion (https://polsl.transistor.fm/107).
The organizers from the Corrosion Research Laboratory, wanting to draw attention to the problem of corrosion, decided to take matters into their own hands and renovated one of the benches located at the Faculty of Chemistry. The CorrBench project is designed to encourage others to take action. In addition, a new magnolia was planted, which was named Zuzia.
In addition, the event has even gained its mascot. It is a Korrodek cat, which has been added to the logo of CorrDays, and on a daily basis is located on the roof of the building “Red Chemistry” of the Faculty of Chemistry of the Silesian University of Technology. His name was chosen during last year’s edition.
- “We are glad that Korrodek has already stayed with our event and makes that corrosion, as we learned during a popular science lecture, can be perceived positively, and in some cases even desirable.” - adds Dr Eng. Marta Wala-Kapica.
Photos by Martin Huć, Agata Kołkowska
