Six weeks of summer vacation? Boredom seems inevitable for many students. For sports enthusiasts, there are often vacation offers from sports clubs, but what do students who are more interested in the natural sciences do? Since this year, they can get a taste of cutting-edge research at the Cluster of Excellence RESOLV.
In the second week of the NRW-summer vacation, RESOLV has invited students to show them how research works. The students can get an insight into the diversity of science, especially since Solvation Science is an interdisciplinary research field. To see what a real day looks like, the students accompany a scientist from the different working groups. 15 early career scientists offerd to take the students to show them how they work in their respective field. They start the day together, can experience first hand how research is done in the different groups and can also carry out smaller experiments themselves. A joint lunch gives the opportunity to exchange experiences.
Every day, the students changed groups to get to know as many departments as possible. Among other things, they were able to visit labs for laser and spectroscopy experiments, for electrochemistry and nanoscale materials research, but also groups for theoretical chemistry and learn how to use simulations to tackle scientific problems.
What is also part of the scientist's job is communication. How to talk about science in an attractive and understandable way the students could learn via a competition. The students have the chance to deal with science communication for the first time by reportng their Summer Camp experiences on social media. The most successful contributions were rewarded with a prize.