On July 2, 2021, Martha Godau and Florian Steinkamp were awarded for their subject papers in the project "Solvation Science@School". The school project was initiated by the Cluster of Excellence RESOLV and took place under the motto "Solvation Science in Disinfection". Godau and Steinkamp wrote their papers in the eleventh grade basic chemistry course at the Schiller School in Bochum.
Commitment in their free time
Martha Godau asked herself the question of how effective disinfectants are at different temperatures for her Facharbeit. Florian Steinkamp looked into the question of odorants in disinfectants and the extent to which these additives affect their effectiveness. For safety reasons, the two did not experiment directly with coronaviruses, but with harmless protein in egg white. The eleventh graders were supervised by their teacher Tobias Schilling. Among other things, he praised the high level of commitment shown by the two, who first had to apply to the school administration under corona conditions in order to be allowed to carry out the experiments at school early in the morning or after lessons.
The prizes of €500 each were presented in person by Dr. Klaus Engel, former Chairman of the Executive Board of Evonik. "The personal commitment of well-trained chemistry teachers is often the best basis for a lifelong enthusiasm for chemistry," Engel emphasized.
Before the award ceremony, Godau and Steinkamp were given a tour of the RESOLV labs at ZEMOS. "About a year ago, we met here in a similar constellation and gave the starting signal for this exciting project," said Prof. Dr. Katrin Sommer, Chair of Didactics of Chemistry, introducing a subsequent joint round of talks on the topic of "Research in Schools and Universities."
A project for the scientists of tomorrow
"SolvationScience@School" is a new educational project in Solvation Science that started in November 2020. The goal of the project is "to get our future researchers excited about solvation research and to instill a passion for chemistry in them at an early age," concludes Prof. Dr. Martina Havenith, spokesperson for the RESOLV Cluster of Excellence, at the event.
"SolvationScience@School" is aimed at secondary school students from Gymnasien and Gesamtschulen and was developed by RESOLV together with the Chair of Didactics of Chemistry at Ruhr University Bochum. In this project, students are to deal with annually changing topics of solvation research in their Facharbeiten.
Thanks to a generous grant from Klaus Engel, the participating schools have the opportunity to apply for a material subsidy of up to a maximum of €1,000 to supplement the equipment needed to carry out the student research projects. The project is also supported by the Gesellschaft der Freunde der RUB.
Further information on RESOLV can be found here.