On March 14 and 15 interested school pupils were offered the opportunity to attend the 51st school holiday course FORSCHUNG at Universität Hamburg. An exciting program awaited them at the school lab “Light & Schools” on Campus Bahrenfeld.
Prof. Martin Trebbin provides insights into his research. Credit: CUI
The course was organized by the Physics Department of Universität Hamburg and was offered to pupils in grades 10 to 13. “This year we had more applications than open places in the course,” CUI coordinator Dr. Thomas Garl, who coordinated the school holiday course at “Light & Schools”, stated. During the first one and a half days the pupils could work on three topics out of the fields particle- and detector physics, optics, laser physics or programming and they could carry out instructed experiments on their own.
“I would like to study physics and I wanted to see if I like the practical side of it, so I just gave it a try here,” Niclas Krause from grade 12 at Stadtteilschule Richard-Linde-Weg explained. “I participated for the first time today and performed the experiment dealing with optical signal transmission,” Krause said. Altogether, there were 12 experiments prepared at the school lab for the 25 pupils. Laureen Lotter and Nadine Eisenmann from Goethe-Gymnasium Lurup had been informed about the course by their A-Level Physics tutor and they took the chance to work with silicon detectors. “Today the scientific background was quite more challenging than yesterday, but it was fun though. Yet, I do not want to become a physicist but rather a lawyer. The holiday course reassured my opinion that law is more likely my subject,” Laureen Lottner confirms. “I may want to study environmental engineering, which would include even more sub-disciplines of natural science,” her friend Nadine Eisenmann adds. “Anyway, I enjoyed the course.”
Traditionally at the end of the school holiday course a professor from the University campus is invited to give a lecture on physics. This year for the first time CUI Professor Martin Trebbin talked about his current research on “Mircrofluidics at High-Intensity X-ray Sources”. School holiday courses are something special even for the lecturers: “When I was a young pupil I visited DESY and got the chance to watch ‘the adults performing actual research.’ That certainly contributed to my enthusiasm towards research and I hope that I could affect some pupils in the same way today,” Trebbin said. “The school holiday course is well appreciated and some of the pupils showed a lot of previous knowledge,” Garl added.
The school holiday course FORSCHUNG has a long tradition at Universität Hamburg and every year there are three courses in the field of physics.