Experiment yourself and discover a fascination class of materials.
In collaboration with the Forschungzentrum Jülich GmbH students’ lab (JuLab), EUSMI has produced a brochure describing soft matter related experiments for high school students form seventh grade on.
The experiments cover a wide range of subjects and complexity from surface tension to liquid crystal displays. Some of the experiments are very simple and can be performed at home, e. g. measuring the swelling degree of gummi bears in water. Others, like the construction of a simple liquid crystal display require laboratory equipment and the supervision by an experienced teacher.
The detailed description of experiments is combined with a comprehensive explanation of the underlying physics and with profiles of scientists at different stages of their career. With this we hope to provide high school students with an entertaining gateway to soft matter science.
The brochure is available for download, in German and in English. If you wish to have a German hard copy or require a translation to another language, please contact the EUSMI management office.
Our high school classes science competition is now terminated. Due to the COVID-pandemic, the contest hasn’t gone the way we had planned.
Although there was a large interest for participating, most of the classes could not prepare a video, due to the pandemic and the consequential closing of schools. Despite those circumstances, there was one single school, which reached the goal and contributed an amazing demonstration video featuring four Soft Matter related experiments. In the light of the difficult circumstances, we would like to reward their commitment. We feel honoured to congratulate the students of the
2nde euro sciences class from the Lycée Blanche de Castille
on their successful participation in the EUSMI Classroom Science Competition. For their wonderful projects and the effort taken, they are rewarded a price money of 500 EURO. Thank you so very much!
It’s a great pleasure to introduce the video from Lycée Blanche de Castille:
With this competition, we hope to contribute to arousing young peoples’ interest and that some of them might decide to join the next generation of Soft Matter scientists.
The prize money was handed over on 10 June 2021 during a small virtual ceremony after an introductory lecture on EUSMI and soft matter in general. A recording of this event is shown in the following video.
The network of the German Helmholtz-Society student-labs regularly organizes the Helmholtz student-congress. High school students are invited to visit the Helmholtz-centre in their surroundings with the aim to introduce them to a specific scientific topic covered in the respective centre and to spark the pupils’ interest for scientific and technical subjects in general.
In 2018 the event on the campus of Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH was dedicated to Soft Matter as the major subject. Besides visits to laboratories and discussions with scientist the students could attend an experimental lecture by Peter Lang.
The lecture covered some basic concepts of Soft Matter science like entropy elasticity or van der Waals interaction and electrostatic repulsion, which where illustrated by numerous entertaining experiments.
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