Hello, this is Miyazaki, a first-year PhD student.

The “Katahira Matsuri” (Katahira Festival) was held on Saturday, October 11th. Our laboratory hosted a research exhibition booth for the first time in eight years.

Since this was the first time for all current students to participate, we had to figure things out as we went along during the preparation. However, we successfully welcomed the day of the event without any issues.

Unfortunately, it was rainy on the day, but we had about 300 visitors—far exceeding our expectations—stop by our booth. At the Maruta & Morii Laboratory booth, based on our laboratory’s long-standing research theme of microcombustion, we demonstrated an experiment titled “Observation of Flame Propagation in Glass Tubes.”

Perhaps because opportunities to see open flames in daily life have decreased with the spread of induction cooktops, many people stopped to watch with great interest. It was particularly memorable to see children’s eyes light up as they watched the flames travel through the glass tubes at various speeds and in different shapes.

We keenly felt the difficulty of explaining specialized research content to the public, especially children, in an easy-to-understand way. At the same time, it was a valuable opportunity to share the excitement of our research with society. We ourselves received a lot of stimulation from the simple questions and expressions of surprise from the visitors.

Due to the unexpected turnout, we unfortunately did not have time to visit other booths, but we are very happy that we were able to interact with so many people.

Looking ahead, we have several academic conferences coming up. We will use this valuable experience as encouragement to devote ourselves even more to our research activities.