New Perspectives in Science Education

Climate change increasingly threatens our everyday life and demands important changes in how we use energy. The EU targets a 40% decrease in greenhouse gas emissions compared to 1990, an increase in shares of renewable energies to 27% and an improvement in energy efficiency of 27% until 2030. The research of the Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) 1073 “Atomic scale control of energy conversion” at the University of Göttingen contributes to these goals by acquiring the fundamental knowledge needed for the development of clean and more efficient ways to convert and store energy. But a clean energy supply can only be reached when everyone and especially the next generation is willing to contribute. Therefore, the CRC educational approach is to develop accessible and exciting hands-on experiments to arouse interest and initiate social discussions about renewable energy. These experiments are regularly exhibited at numerous local public events like “IdeenExpo” in Hanover and “Girls’ Day”. All primarily target school students. Apart from that, they are essential parts of camps at the XLAB – Göttingen laboratory for young people and of “Hands-On Energy Science Workshops” at the University of Göttingen offered for and adapted to the individual knowledge and interest of local school classes. The triboelectric generator which uses friction losses to generate power is presented here as an example of one of the hands-on experiments. It is based on CRC projects about understanding and controlling friction and energy dissipation in order to improve energy efficiency. The triboelectric generator can be included in an interactive display when shown at public events, or can be explained with the help of everyday phenomena and entertaining experiments when presented directly to school students.

Keywords: Experiments, energy science, research