Funding for physics laboratory: Students from Karlsruhe experience exciting experiments!

Funding for physics laboratory: Students from Karlsruhe experience exciting experiments!

The Karlsruhe University of Education (PHKA) receives follow-up funding for its physics teaching-learning laboratory, known as PHyLa. This was revealed in a statement today. The Vector Foundation is supporting the facility for a further two and a half years from autumn 2025. This new funding package will specifically help to increase the number of school visits and further expand the offering for students in the region. Prof. Dr. Tobias Ludwig, initiator of the PHyLa and head of the Institute for Physics and Technical Education at the PHKA, emphasizes the important role of the laboratory in scientific education in the greater Karlsruhe area.

In recent years, PHyLa has established itself as a central institution that offers project days on eleven different physics topics. These topics are diverse and range from magnetism and electricity to physical phenomena when cycling to climate physics and the use of renewable energies. The project days are carried out by students from PHKA and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and are open to all school types and grades free of charge. Since October 2022, over 2,700 students, from grades 2 to 11, including primary, secondary and community schools as well as high schools, have benefited from this extracurricular learning location.

Effects of follow-up funding

The upcoming second funding phase will not only increase the number of participants, but also help to supplement purely school-based learning paths with practical, experimental approaches. So far, 123 classes from 41 different schools have taken part in the project days. Due to the high demand, which is reflected in a long waiting list for school visits, the follow-up funding will secure the offer until the end of March 2028.

Parallel to these developments, the physics teaching-learning (research) laboratory at the University of Mainz is working on innovative teaching-learning situations and testing rooms for physics teacher training students. The laboratory enables students to develop experimental environments that are tested together with students from cooperating schools in Rhineland-Palatinate and Hesse. The evaluation of these environments takes place through student experiment days and is supported by video analytical methods.

Creative approaches in physics teaching

A methodological focus of the courses is on the didactically sensible integration of digital media in order to promote creative and independent work. Virtual experimental environments (virtual reality experiments, VRE) play a central role here. These AERs make it possible to carry out physical experiments in three-dimensional, realistic representation and can be used both to prepare and follow-up lessons.

The developments in the physics teaching-learning laboratory at the PHKA and the parallel projects at the University of Mainz clearly show that innovative approaches in physics education are becoming increasingly important. While the PHKA clearly conveys the physical basics, the didactic potential of new media and learning environments is being further researched in Mainz. At a time when digital skills are becoming increasingly important, this interlinking of theory and practice plays an essential role for future physics education.