"Jugend forscht" - Phorms students win in the physics category

We are very happy to announce that after two years of intensive work, Ria Arora and David Jukic from Q4, have won the "Jugend forscht" regional competition Rhine-Main East. They received support especially from the deputy Head of Secondary and Head of the STEM department Audrey Schollier. They won the decisive prize in the category "Physics". They also won the special prize for "Quality control through non-destructive". Sponsored by the German society of the same name. This qualified them to be part of the state competition. As part of this event, they will represent the Phorms Taunus Campus on March 29 and 30 in Darmstadt.

"Jugend forscht" is Germany's best-known competition for young scientists. Its aim is to enthuse children and young people for mathematics, computer science, natural sciences and technology (MINT) as well as to find and promote young talent. The participants work projects on of their own choice in the STEM field. The results are then presented to the competition jury. For this purpose, a written paper and a self-designed stand are prepared. An oral presentation followed by questions from the jury is also part of the competition. More than 120 competitions throughout Germany at regional, state and national level. The winners of the regional competitions take part. The state winners of Jugend forscht then go on to compete in the national finals.

For their presentation, they dealt with the topic: "Self-developed interferometer".

"The project aims to find out if it is possible to use a homemade interferometer to detect viral aerosols (e.g. COVID-19 aerosols etc.) in a room. An Interferometer uses the superposition of waves for precision measurement. The research duo has created a computational simulation. This is used to see how accurate the interferometer needs to be, in order to achieve the set goal. A calibration of the interferometer is to determine the existing interferometric sensitivity. This is made possible by measuring the change in refractive indices of liquids, for example distilled water, experimentally by means of visible changes in the interference pattern. Up to the day of the competition more detailed experiments were conducted to determine whether it is possible to detect viral aerosols in a room."

We are happy for Ria and David for their successful research and the victory. Further, we wish them "Good luck!" for the upcoming  state competition and keep our fingers crossed.

sources: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugend_forscht
https://www.jugend-forscht.de/