Promoting scientific thinking and working with the help of physics experiments is the aim of the new teaching and learning laboratory physiXS, which was opened today at the University of Oldenburg. physiXS is an extracurricular learning centre for pupils and also serves the training and further education of physics teachers.

"Experimenting in the laboratory is the best way to understand physical phenomena and their causes," says Prof Dr Michael Komorek, initiator and head of the project, who has recruited student teachers from the university as mentors. These mentors guide primary and lower secondary school pupils - in a learning environment that is tailored to the pupils' interests and learning requirements. This allows them to experience how physics works and what can be realised with physical knowledge, whether in the field of energy, on which their own experiments are planned, or on sustainable development in coastal areas.

The future physics teachers also benefit from this. "By supporting pupils in their experiments, they learn how pupils learn physics, what ideas they have about physical phenomena and what difficulties, but also opportunities, they have in understanding them," explains Komorek. In this way, the school laboratory also serves to provide didactic and methodological training for physics teachers and offers a variety of starting points for empirical research into learning physics and the natural sciences.

The physics laboratory for pupils is a building block in the Oldenburg Teaching-Learning Programme (OLELA) network. This includes CHEMOL - Chemistry in Oldenburg, the Green School, the Sensory School, the Computing Science School Centre and the technical education offers. physiXS is supported by the EWE Foundation and works together with various schools in Oldenburg and extracurricular learning locations in the region - from the Oldenburg Regional Environmental Centre to the Wadden Sea House and the Technology and Nature Learning Centre in Wilhelmshaven to the Wittbülten Environmental Centre on Spiekeroog.

More information

Article NWZ, 20 May 2011

LocalTV report, citizens' radio station O1, 20 May 2011, (8th to 11th minute)