Topics & Experiments
What causes lightning?
What is electricity?
Buoyancy, Soap Bubbles and Architecture
Why can water striders walk on water but we cannot?
How are soap bubbles created?
And why is it more difficult to swim fully clothed?
Why do we distribute salt on icy sidewalks?
How did people in former times manage to eat ice cream in summer without refrigerators?
Play of Colours and Building a Kaleidoscope
How are colours created?
Why does the sun look red in the evenings?
How does a kaleidoscope work?
A Little Light is Burning – Experiments with Fire
What exactly is fire?
How is the colour of fire determined?
What catches fire?
A Visit to the Haus der Astronomie
The “Haus der Astronomie” is run by the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy. Here you can look at the starlit sky in the middle of the day and bombard our astronomers with your questions.
Why are we propelled forward in the car when we hit the brakes?
How can be balance a bucket filled with water on our head without spilling a drop?
How much does air weigh?
How can we make water levitate across a pasteboard?
How does the weather work?
How are rainbows formed?
What’s at the end of the rainbow?
And why does it usually run from red to blue?
The Planets of the Solar System
What does it look like on the planets nearest to us?
Why can it rain lead-sulphur crystals on Venus?
How far away is the remotest planet and could we fly there?
Why does the sun shine?
What is the sun’s core temperature?
For how long will the sun continue to shine?
Are there stars that burn longer than the sun, and why are there stars that shine red or blue?
A Tour of the Institute of Environmental Physics
Environmental physics is concerned with all things environmental: It looks at volcanoes, glaciers, the ocean and the atmosphere, climate and ground water and investigates how all these things are connected and condition our biosphere.
Just how big is a galaxy and how many stars does it have?
Do all galaxies look like the Milky Way?
What is the black hole in the middle of the galaxy?
How can far-away galaxies help us glimpse the past and understand the evolution of the universe?
