Why Medieval Video Games are Popular: School Students Saw the Laboratories of the Department of History

10:18, June 16, 2021

The university held a lecture of the All-Russian marathon "Science Nearby"

Sergey Ryabov, a researcher at the Laboratory of Editing Archaeography at Ural Federal University, is normally engaged in Russian-French relations of the 16th century, but today he played an unusual role as a school teacher for high school students participating in the federal project "Big Break" - on Russia Day he gave a lecture to children about the current Middle Ages as part of the "Science Nearby" marathon.

"Many people believe that history is of interest only to historians or local historians.However, in Ekaterinburg there are many residents who are not indifferent to the history of their native land, who through archival sources and books, particularly in our laboratory, learn a lot about the history of their family," notes Sergey.

Sergey demonstrates to the students a unique equipment of the laboratory - a specialized book scanner RuScan2A3, which allows you to get a high quality image at high speed from old printed books and manuscripts without damaging them.

Referring to the theme of the lecture, adapted for high school students, the young scientist notes that many researchers and even authors of video games constantly return to the subject of the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages, according to Sergei, became especially relevant in 2020, when everyone was talking about a new plague during the coronavirus pandemic.

"Many schoolchildren imagine researchers as gray-haired scientific men, and almost none of them have been to science laboratories. It is important for us to perform a special educational function, showing young people the modern scientific centers the university is rich in. It's nice that projects such as the "Science Nearby" marathon contribute to this," says Victor Koksharov, Rector of the UrFU.

Moreover, participants also visited the laboratory of natural science methods in humanities research today and found out how a stereomicroscope can anticipate what the climate in the Urals was like more than 8000 years ago.