From TUD campus to the world: children's lab now also in Brazil

For more than fifteen years, hundreds of primary school children have been coming to TUD Dresden University of Technology every year to experiment and learn independently in the children's laboratory under the guidance of food chemist Dr Uwe Schwarzenbolz. The successful TUD format has now been exported to Brazil for the first time, where it has been enthusiastically received by all those involved - university staff, parents and, above all, the children.

Creating a rainbow from red cabbage juice, writing with secret ink from the fridge or breaking down a black felt-tip pen into different colours - all these experiments fascinate girls and boys aged 7 to 10 year after year in the Children's Lab of the Faculty of Chemistry and Food Chemistry at TUD. Since 2007, Dr Uwe Schwarzenbolz and a team of his students have been guiding the young scientists through a series of exciting experiments, equipped with lab coats, safety goggles and child-friendly laboratory equipment. ‘Our aim is to make research and discovery fun for children as early as possible and to take away their fear of chemistry. It is also important to us to demonstrate scientific work. That's why our programme not only includes experimentation and observation, but also explanation and documentation,’ explains Uwe Schwarzenbolz. In other words, a ‘SciComm format par excellence.

Visiting Professor Rodrigo Stephani from the Universidade Ferderal de Juiz de Fora (Brazil) also thought so. During his stay at TUD as a Humboldt Fellow, his two children took part in the children's lab and were delighted. The idea of setting up the children's laboratory in Brazil quickly came up. No sooner said than done: a guest visit in July of this year took Uwe Schwarzenbolz and his colleague Prof Thomas Henle to Brazil to give lectures and scientific presentations at the Universidade Ferderal de Juiz de Fora (UFJF) - and to use this opportunity to set up a children's lab.

Uwe Schwarzenbolz himself led the first session with fourteen children: ‘The children carried out the experiments with the same enthusiasm and interest as the kids here. The parents were able to watch the whole time from a neighbouring room and were thoroughly impressed. You could also see the student supervisors enjoying the children's lab. In conversations I had with scientific colleagues there, it was clear that the event also received a lot of attention and approval from the faculty,’ reports Schwarzenbolz. Now that the child-friendly equipment has been organised and the Brazilian supervisors have been trained, the format will be held regularly at the UFJF from now on.

In addition to communicating knowledge to children, the format in Brazil also serves to raise the profile and visibility of a solid science education - from an early age. For Thomas Henle and Uwe Schwarzenbolz, the trip to Brazil was the start of a close collaboration with the UFJF in research and teaching and thus a significant contribution to the internationalisation of the field of food chemistry.

Contact:
Dr Uwe Schwarzenbolz
Chair of Food Chemistry
TUD Dresden University of Technology
Email:
Phone +49 351 463-35122