Schüler Campus and Science Café 2023

In the context of the celebrations of "30 years of the Max Planck Society in Saxony", Elena Gati gave a lecture to schoolchildren in the theater hall of the Herkuleskeule (Kulturpalast). A few days after the “Schüler Campus”, Uri was one of the three experts at the “Science Café”, who discussed with interested citizens about science and their own research fields.

Approximately 100 students in grades 10-12 had the unique opportunity to directly engage with science on the morning of September 7, 2023. The program of the Schüler Campus featured four lectures, with two originating from the Max Planck Institutes in Leipzig and Dresden, respectively. Topics covered included discussions on extreme weather events and climate change-induced record-breaking occurrences, insights into genetic detective work involving ancient DNA, an exploration of the phenomenon of perpetual stillness in some regions of the Earth, and a lecture by Elena Gati from MPI CPfS titled "From Quantum Physics in Cryogenic Laboratories to Emerging Technologies," which included a small-scale experimental demonstration.

In spite of the abundance of information, the students remained engaged throughout the speakers' presentations, even though delivering talks from a theater stage was an unusual experience for them. However, the attentive silence with which the students absorbed the speakers' explanations, the enthusiastic applause, the curious questions that ensued, and the intriguing conversations that emerged afterward served as a rewarding experience for the scientists who presented their work.

Following the fourth lecture, many of the students were treated to a delightful surprise: the opportunity to personally witness the levitation of a small train using liquid nitrogen while adhering to safety guidelines.

The Science Café on 14.09.2023 offered interested citizens the chance to receive information on current research from three of six Max Planck Institutes in Saxony. Three group leaders with different research areas were presented as experts to them. The biologist Jesse Veenvliet, the mathematician Guido Montafar and Uri Vool from the MPI CPfS as physicist discuss "their" research with them. The citizens in the three small groups, each with one researcher, asked interesting questions and opinions were lively exchanged. Therefore, both for the citizens and for the experts, the scheduled 15 minutes per table passed much too quickly.

EG/LSc