Alain Hubert Welcomes Mathieu and Bruno Tacq at Class Zero Emission
Mathieu Tacq model
© International Polar Foundation
On 14 July, Alain Hubert, President of the International Polar Foundation, welcomed at Class Zero Emission (CZE) young Mathieu Tacq, a 12 year-old boy who constructed a scale model of the Princess Elisabeth Station with the help of his father, Bruno.
Accompanied by his family, Mathieu visited the IPF to lend his model of the station to the CZE education team. During their visit Mathieu and his father had the opportunity to exchange information and anecdotes with Alain Hubert about their common passion: the Princess Elisabeth Station. They exchanged information how the station was constructed in Antarctica and how Mathieu's replica of the station was built.
The education team is very grateful to the Tacq Family for their wonderful gift! Indeed, their model is an excellent pedagogical tool: Firstly, it is cut in two halves, which allows the viewer to see what the station looks like inside. Secondly, one half shows the station's external steel structure while the other half shows its internal wooden structure, allowing visitors to CZE to have a look at the station both with and without its external steel structure. Mathieu and his dad also went into painstaking detail. They placed 408 miniature functioning photovoltaic cells around the station, and they even gave the station a winter mode and a summer mode, which is determined by whether the garages are covered with a layer of snow or not. They even went so far as to include a snow tractor for ploughing snow, which can be seen in one of the model's garages. Passion for the station can certainly take one a long way without even having to travel to Antarctica!
The Tacq Family's scale model of the Princess Elisabeth Station will be on display at Class Zero Emission starting in September and will remain a permanent part of CZE throughout the entire duration of the project.
