["Let's play with the Earth": a project of environmental education for primary school children]. / "Giochiamo con la Terra": un progetto di educazione ambientale per la scuola primaria.

OBJECTIVE: Raising awareness and knowledge in Pavia Public Primary School students, and indirectly in their parents, about environmental problems like waste recycling and energy saving, developing with games the concept of separate collection of rubbish; creating an environmentally conscious awareness and sense of responsibility towards sustainable behavior. DESIGN: The educational program lasted six months. Data collection was performed using anonymous questionnaires, administered to "treated" students at the beginning and at the end of the program. The "control" population only answered a single questionnaire at the end of the project. It was also carried out an assessment of the fallout of the project on parents, through a questionnaire at the beginning and at the end of the program. At the end of the educational intervention, a satisfaction questionnaire was administered to teachers. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: The enrolled population was composed of 1,358 students from 3rd, 4th and 5th classes of Public Primary Schools of the four Pavia School Districts: 938 "treated" students followed the program and 420 "controls" only answered the final questionnaire. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The data concerning the pupils' knowledge are expressed in terms of frequencies: at first, we evaluated the comparison between "treated" students knowledge at the beginning and at the end of the program in each class, then we made the comparison between "treated" and "control" students at the end of the program. RESULTS: The comparison of the final questionnaires ("treated" students vs "controls") revealed in "treated" students higher knowledge of terms "waste" (94.5% vs 89.0%) and "separate collection" (97.3% vs 90.7%): the differences are statistically significant. Also the practice of separate collection of rubbish is more frequent in "treated" students' families than in "control" ones (83.5% vs 71.4%, p =0.0001).The analysis of teachers' satisfaction questionnaires showed positive ratings with high average scores for each item investigated. The analysis of parents' questionnaires revealed that 99.8% of them knows the meaning and 89% practice separate collection of rubbish. CONCLUSION: The program has proved effective in increasing students' short-term knowledge and making also families more interested in problems like waste recycling and separate collection of rubbish. The need of an awareness and environmental education campaign for the general population is apparent and the role of children, promoting knowledge and environmental behaviour changes in parents and community, has not to be underestimated.

Marbles in the façade of the "Certosa di Pavia": a physico-chemical study.

In the framework of an interdisciplinary research project on the well known monastery "Certosa di Pavia", the thermal and structural properties of marbles employed in the construction of the façade of the basilica were investigated in order to detect the main decomposition phenomena occurring on the monument surface. The results obtained by means of thermogravimetric and differential thermal analyses, as well as by means of X-ray diffraction and IR spectroscopy, allowed one to characterize samples taken from various sculptures of the façade and to bring out the degradation phenomena occurring in some of them, in particular the formation of "black crusts" with a high content in gypsum. The present findings are in fair agreement with those reported by other research groups which also studied with different techniques the construction materials of this monument.

The phases of [(CH3)4N](ClO4) at low temperature.

The low-temperature crystal structures of tetramethylammonium perchlorate, [(CH(3))(4)N](ClO(4)), are analysed. At 210 K, a collection of 376 unique reflections on a single crystal gave R = 0.0567 for space group P4/nmm, with a(1) = 8.2376 (14), c(1) = 5.8256 (12) A and Z = 2, where the ClO(4) groups are disordered over four orientations. Below T(c) = 170 K, these groups order in four sublattices, each ion gradually choosing one unique orientation. At 150 K, the crystal is microtwinned. 1389 unique reflections were refined in the orthorhombic space group P2(1)2(1)2, with a(3) = 11.714 (3), b(3) = 11.784 (3), c(3) = 5.8265 (9) A, Z = 4 and R = 0.087. At 30 K, Rietveld refinement gave the same structure as is found at 150 K, with a clear difference between a(3) and b(3) [a(3) = 11.566 (2), b(3) = 11.806 (2) and c(3) = 5.729 (1) A]. The structural models and the phase transition are explained on the basis of electrostatic octopole-octopole interactions among the ClO(4) groups within layers perpendicular to the c axis. The order parameters of the low-temperature phase are discussed in relation to the structural results.