As of: March 18, 2024, 9:31 a.m
By: Harald Hettich
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They explore this world: class 9f at the Neubiberg high school with their team of teachers led by Christian Herdt (back left).
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The 9f from Neubiberg High School won the “Jugend forscht” competition.
This is no coincidence: the students receive targeted support.
Neubiberg – Levi gets to the point.
“To find and discover new things” is the 14-year-old’s main intention when he plunges into the world of research at Neubiberg High School.
Around the science classroom: lots of approving nods and agreement from others.
All of these 20 girls and boys make up class 9f at the school on Cramer-Klett-Straße.
And it is no coincidence that the F is emblazoned behind the grade: it stands for “research,” which is what makes this group special.
Since 2010, Christian Herdt has been supervising a two-year cycle for the 8th and 9th grades in a team of five specialist teachers from research-relevant disciplines such as biology, chemistry or physics, which is intended to culminate in participation in the national “Jugend forscht” competition.
“We have never been as successful here as we were this year,” the chemistry and biology teacher cheers.
In fact: With ten groups and as many scientific topics (see box), the Neubiberg team recently entered a strong field of researchers in the regional competition.
In the end, the high school students took home six podium places.
It was even enough to win twice in “Students Experimenting”.
For Nikita, who took a decisive approach to researching the “Grätzel cell” – a more environmentally friendly type than the common silicon cells.
And for the trio Caro, Lara and Kaja.
The three are working on changing the chlorophyll formula to make photosynthesis more effective.
“It should be faster and more efficient so that you can harvest more frequently throughout the year and more people can be fed better,” explains Caro.
“The young people are highly motivated”
The first places will go to the state finals in Regensburg at the end of April.
Of course, everyone in this special class can feel like a winner.
“The young people here are highly motivated and invest a lot of time and energy in addition to their normal school workload,” emphasizes specialist teacher Eva Siegert.
On Mondays in the afternoon double-hour mode after regular lessons, the young people work on their experiments.
“But they don’t look at the clock and don’t want to go home once they’re in their experimental setups,” says Herdt with a smile.
Research goes far beyond school.
“We also meet at home,” says Kaja.
Because time is running out.
Studies by all groups lasting several months lead to the hot phase around and after the Christmas holidays, when their own findings must be submitted to a jury of experts from “Jugend forscht” in the prescribed 15-page exposé in bite-sized format by the deadline in January.
“We sat together for four hours every day during the holidays,” says Lennart.
In a trio with Levi and Sirinya, he worked in the chemistry department to produce an alloy made of the metals bismuth, indium, zinc and tin that had not yet been found on the Internet and researched its density, hardness and conductivities.
It is worth noting that 14-year-olds in the field of under-21s from “Jugend forscht” set a milestone by coming second against some much older competition.
“We already have contacts with business - because Airbus, for example, showed great interest in the alloy in hours-long conversations,” says Lennart and shows the accompanying cell phone video, which gives even the uninitiated an impression of the difficult subject.
Levi, already dressed in a matching NASA shirt, assures us that we will “stick with it”.
After all, you are here to “find and discover new things”.
Big variety
The range of topics shows the diversity of the research classes at the Neubiberg high school.
In the end, Enrica and Diana were rewarded with second place in the chemistry area in the “Students experimenting” segment: They used realistic values to test how water fleas react to different concentrations of sunscreen in the water and thus determined from an environmental point of view what the future of freshwater waters looks like.
Philipp and Arthur were awarded third place for exploring the “effects of music on a person’s concentration” in the working world.
Philipp and Alexander won the Airbus Special Prize with their project to identify the challenges of autonomous driving (e-cars).
Further work in the class included research into the proliferation of yeast fungi in special types of tea, the perception of sine tones in background noise, the comparison of hotplate types according to energy efficiency and the biological “search process for objects taking gender into account”.
The demand for the research class is high: “We have long had more interested parties than places,” says teacher Christian Herdt, who looks after the students with Eva Siegert, Michael Sachs, Stephanie Spinner and Lena Himmelreich.
Further news from Neubiberg and the Munich district can be found here.