Teenagers enjoy plasma physics 

During the Easter holidays the Schülerprojektwoche for 14 and 15 year old pupils took place at the Ruhr-University Bochum. The Schülerprojektwoche is an established part of public relations for pupils and is, belong others, financed by both SFBs. 

For one week 60 girls and boys did experiments in four different workshops, namely “astronomy”, “plasma physics”, “energy efficient house building” and “physics in medicine”. 

In the plasma project, which was supervised by PhD and Master students of both SFBs, the pupils deposited thin gold layers on glass substrate using a plasma coater. Additionally, they characterized different samples regarding thickness, optical transmission and conductivity in dependence of the plasma deposition time.

Besides the workshops, the girls and boys experienced university life. They attended a lecture, visited “real” physics laboratories and watched a show at the planetarium in Bochum.  At the end of the 4 days, they created posters and presented their results of the workshops to the other pupils during a poster session. 

The Schülerprojektwoche was successfully finished with a quiz duel about the learned physics between the four workshop groups. Here, the plasma physics group won and was awarded with a cup.