Helmholtz Day in the HZB School Lab
Guest at HZB: the 5th class from primary school "Am Lindenpark" in Nauen. © HZB/S. Zerbe
Eva (l.) and Kim (r.) told us what they like best about the Helmholtz-Day at HZB.
Find out how an electric motor works - this was one of the questions the students had to answer.
Do you know who Hermann von Helmholtz was? At this question, most of the primary school kids shook their head. Yet, the namesake of the Helmholtz Association was one of the most important natural scientists of the 19th century, and one of the last universal scholars. To keep his memory alive, Helmholtz Day has been held regularly, this sixth time in the Helmholtz Association’s School Lab. HZB invited 5th grade pupils from Nauen (Brandenburg) to Wannsee to conduct their own experiments in the School Lab.
“We put together an exciting programme for the Helmholtz Day: the pupils learned something about the life of Hermann von Helmholtz and were then able to do their own experiments on the subject of magnetism. They thoroughly enjoyed working in the School Lab, and they stayed concentrated the whole time,” says Dagmar Köpnick-Welzel from the HZB School Lab.
Two kids tell us what they liked best about the Helmholtz Day:
Eva, 10 years old
“I had never heard of Hermann von Helmholtz. I thought it was fascinating that he was not so good at school, but still invented so many things. What I especially liked in the School Lab was the experiment with the electromagnet. I made a ring hover using the magnet; that was really fun. The problems on the worksheets were quite tricky, but it was also fun to guess the right solution words.”
Kim, 10 years old
“My group studied how you can shield magnetic fields. That is important if someone has a pacemaker. I tried out different materials, and it worked best with steel. We spent two hours on the train, metro and bus to get to the School Lab. But it was worth it: we have never done anything like what we did here in school. At school, we are still doing science, but next year we start physics. So I will go into it already knowing a bit more than before.”
About the Helmholtz School Labs
The aim of the Helmholtz school labs is to make science fun for children and adolescents. Just how much of a success the 29 labs of the Helmholtz Association are can be seen from the high visitor numbers. In 2016, more than 90,000 school students researched and experimented at the Helmholtz Association’s various locations.
The School Labs of HZB are in equally high demand: This year, more than 3,000 school students experimented in one of the two labs.
- Shedding light on insulators: how light pulses unfreeze electronsMetal oxides are abundant in nature and central to technologies such as photocatalysis and photovoltaics. Yet, many suffer from poor electrical conduction, caused by strong repulsion between electrons in neighboring metal atoms. Researchers at HZB and partner institutions have shown that light pulses can temporarily weaken these repulsive forces, lowering the energy required for electrons mobility, inducing a metal-like behavior. This discovery offers a new way to manipulate material properties with light, with high potential to more efficient light-based devices.
- Lithium-sulphur batteries with lean electrolyte: problem areas clarifiedUsing a non-destructive method, a team at HZB investigated practical lithium-sulphur pouch cells with lean electrolyte for the first time. With operando neutron tomography, they could visualise in real-time how the liquid electrolyte distributes and wets the electrodes across multilayers during charging and discharging. These findings offer valuable insights into the cell failure mechanisms and are helpful to design compact Li-S batteries with a high energy density in formats relevant to industrial applications.
- Berlin Science Award goes to Philipp AdelhelmBattery researcher Prof. Dr. Philipp Adelhelm has been awarded the 2024 Berlin Science Award. He is a professor at the Institute of Chemistry at Humboldt University in Berlin (HU) and heads a joint research group at HU and the Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin (HZB). The materials scientist and electrochemist is investigating sustainable batteries, which play a key role in the success of the energy transition. He is one of the leading international experts in the field of sodium-ion batteries.