INFN ScienzaPerTutti: an overview of the annual contest for schools

ScienzaPerTutti, literally ScienceForAll, is the web portal dedicated to Physics education and popularization of science curated by INFN Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics’ researchers. The contents are mainly addressed to High School students and teachers and are designed to engage the audience with the main topics of modern research in particle and nuclear physics, theoretical and astroparticle physics. The missions are to promote public awareness of science, to raise interest towards the importance of discoveries along with the applications in everyday life, to support teaching/learning of modern physics using innovative methods. The portal, created in 2002, has evolved through the years including different multimedia products like didactic units, research materials, columns, infographics, videos, interviews, book reviews, and podcasts, and expanding the reachability that has currently an average of 3000 entries every day. After an introduction to the leading sections of ScienzaPerTutti web site, this contribution will present the development of the annual contest addressed to Middle and High-School students that, in 2023, arrived at its XVIII edition. Every year the contest is devoted to a different topic and participants are asked to design and realize a multimedia product to share their work. In 2023 the contest was centered on the Physics of sports, students have to choose a sport and describe the Physics beyond it. In particular, High School students were also asked to imagine the same sport played on another planet or in condition out of the ordinary to invent a new sport. 299 teams from 95 Italian schools applied for the 2023 competition and we will here report about the works and the outcomes.