Petnica Science Center
Encyclopedia
Valjevo
Valjevo is a city and municipality located in western Serbia. It is the center of the Kolubara District, which includes five other smaller municipalities with a total population of almost 180,000 people...
, Serbia
Serbia
Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
. PSC has organized more than 2,500 programs (seminars, workshops, research camps, conferences, etc.) since its opening, for nearly 50,000 students and science teachers in 15 disciplines of science, technology and humanities, with more than 7.000 lecturers.
History
Petnica Science Center was founded in 1982 as a YugoslaviaYugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
n scientific center for elementary
Elementary school
An elementary school or primary school is an institution where children receive the first stage of compulsory education known as elementary or primary education. Elementary school is the preferred term in some countries, particularly those in North America, where the terms grade school and grammar...
and high school
High school
High school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....
high-achieving students, for extracurricular activities, supervised by university professors, researcher
Researcher
A researcher is somebody who performs research, the search for knowledge or in general any systematic investigation to establish facts. Researchers can work in academic, industrial, government, or private institutions.-Examples of research institutions:...
s from various Yugoslav and (mostly) Serbian Institute
Institute
An institute is a permanent organizational body created for a certain purpose. Often it is a research organization created to do research on specific topics...
s, and research assistants and graduate
Graduate school
A graduate school is a school that awards advanced academic degrees with the general requirement that students must have earned a previous undergraduate degree...
and postgraduate students. PSC states, on its website, to be "the biggest and, probably, the oldest (such center) in South Eastern Europe".
Majority of PSC programs are designed for secondary-school students, although there are a lot of programs for primary-school pupils.
There are special seminars and activities for university students and science teachers.
PSC nourishes international character and attendants of regular Petnica programs come not only from all countries of former Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
, but also from other (mostly Balkans
Balkans
The Balkans is a geopolitical and cultural region of southeastern Europe...
and Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an) countries. Most of the courses are being realized in Serbian language
Serbian language
Serbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....
, with which are former Yugoslavians familiarized. International camps and conferences are held in English and, in lesser part, in Russian.
Petnica International
Petnica International (PI) is one of the PSC programs held in English. PI is being organized once a year, for international participants. Students 17 to 21 years old plan and realize real-life scientific projects in one of 15 disciplines (Mathematics, Physics, Astronomy, Electronics, Computer Science and Robotics, Biology, Molecular Biomedicine, Chemistry, Geology, Geography, Archeology, History, Linguistics, Sociology, and Psychology). PI takes place in July and August every year and lasts for 15 days.Professor Ivan Aničin
Ivan Aničin
Ivan Aničin, is Yugoslav and Serbian nuclear physicist, particle physicist, astrophysicist, and cosmologist, university Full Professor and Distinguished Professor of scientific institutes in Belgrade , Bristol , Grenoble , and Munich .He has been Head of Department of Nuclear and...
of Faculty of Physics, University of Belgrade
University of Belgrade
The University of Belgrade is the oldest and largest university of Serbia.Founded in 1808 as the Belgrade Higher School in revolutionary Serbia, by 1838 it merged with the Kragujevac-based departments into a single university...
http://www.bg.ac.rs, and Institute of Physics Belgrade http://www.ipb.ac.rs is President of Scientific Committee of Youth International Scientific Conference, "A Step into Science", organized by Petnica Science Center, and a great contributor and patron of Petnica Science Center, PSC.
Petnica Science Centre is located in the village Petnica, near Valjevo (Western Serbia
Serbia
Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
). It has fully equipped boarding facilities with 100-bed dormitories and a restaurant, and possesses numerous laboratories, classrooms, big and multi-functional library with a carefully designed Teaching Resource Center.
Students and teachers, participants at some of PSC’s programs, have access to rich library with over 40,000 books and journal
Journal
__FORCETOC__A journal has several related meanings:* a daily record of events or business; a private journal is usually referred to as a diary....
s, and computer database with thousands of electronic journal
Electronic journal
Electronic journals, also known as ejournals, e-journals, and electronic serials, are scholarly journals or intellectual magazines that can be accessed via electronic transmission. In practice, this means that they are usually published on the Web...
s and books, and Teacher Resource Center with specific training capacities.
PSC has 35 computers dispersed through PSC’s facilities, which are accessible 24-hours a day, and laboratories and professional workshops of different types and functions. PSC is member of National research and education network
National Research and Education Network
A National Research and Education Network is a specialised internet service provider dedicated to supporting the needs of the research and education communities within a country....
- National Academic Internet Network (AMRES), and is connected, by optical cables, to its 10 Gbps grid
Grid computing
Grid computing is a term referring to the combination of computer resources from multiple administrative domains to reach a common goal. The grid can be thought of as a distributed system with non-interactive workloads that involve a large number of files...
and internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
. PSC owns various types of teaching and research-grade equipment. It is used for students’ individual projects and research activities.