International Cosmic Day 2025 at TU Dresden: High school students explore cosmic particles

On November 13, 2025, the International Cosmic Day (ICD) once again took place at the TUD Dresden University of Technology - a worldwide day of action on which high school students have the opportunity to slip into the role of researchers themselves and explore the fascinating field of cosmic particles.

This year, the TU Dresden team welcomed 14 dedicated students from grades 9 and 10, who came from Löbau, Dresden, Hoyerswerda and Pirna, accompanied by a teacher, to spend a whole day conducting exciting experiments and gaining insights into astroparticle physics.

Under expert guidance, the young people worked at several stations and gained practical research experience:

• Construction of cloud chambers, in which the young researchers were able to make the traces of ionizing particles impressively visible.

• Measurements with the Kamiokanne experiment - a simple but effective experiment for observing cosmic muons.

• Experiments with scintillation counters, with which the particle count rate could be determined and compared with other locations worldwide.

© Malte Müller

The students were supervised by a dedicated team of young scientists and students from the Institute of Nuclear and Particle Physics.

The International Cosmic Day at TU Dresden once again showed how inspiring direct research experience can be for young people. The mixture of experimentation, exchange and proximity to current science made for a varied and insightful day - and perhaps for some of the participants this was the first step towards a scientific career.