Public Relations
Plasma physics events for high school students
The project week for high school students at Ruhr University Bochum is an educational program of the CRC 1316, the Faculty of Physics and Astronomy at the RUB, and of di. The student project week takes place twice a year during the Easter vacations and during the autumn vacations.
From April 3rd to 6th, the project week was hosted for over 60 female students in grades 8 to 10. The girls chose between four workshops: plasma physics, astronomy, physics in medicine, and House of the Future. The project "From Plasma to Gold Layers" allows the students to gain an insight into the generation and applications of plasmas. Using the sputter coater and professional laboratory equipment, the students could deposit and examine gold layers themselves. During the project week, the students attended a lecture by Prof. Dr. Judith Golda on "hands-on plasmas – between material science and medicine "and visited laboratories and the Planetarium Bochum. On the closing day, the results of the students' research were presented in a poster session, followed by a quiz and lunch. The next project week Autumn for female and male students in grades 8 and 9 will occur from the 9th to the 13th of October.
The Faculty of Physics enables students to complete a school internship in Physics.
From March 27th to 31st, we welcomed two interns from grade 9. After a short introduction to plasma physics, the students worked on the sputter coater. They examined the coated samples. For this purpose, they determined the transmission with a spectrometer, the layer thickness with the profilometer, and the conductivity. The interns also gained experience in handling data and in data evaluation. The goal of the internship is also to give an impression of laboratory work and current research. Therefore, doctoral students, bachelor's, and master's students guided the interns through the labs and presented their experiments. The interns also visited the NRW state competition "Jugend forscht," which took place at the Ruhr University Bochum from 27th to 29th March.
The "mobile plasma workshop" took place for the first time on June 5th. Our plasma truck visited an 11th-grade physics class at school. In the beginning, the students watched a short movie and received basic knowledge about plasmas and their applications. After a quick quiz, they worked on the experiments in smaller groups. The students examined the light emitted by plasmas with an optical spectrometer and observed how electric and magnetic fields can influence plasmas. Information on the experiments on the students' iPads guided the workshop. The workshop was a success, and the students showed great interest. As an advanced course in physics, they already had a good understanding of electric and magnetic fields. However, plasma physics is not part of the school curriculum. Through the students' feedback, we have gained insights on how to improve our workshop going forward.