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Eight students from Ghana are participating in a workshop, holding up lenses and looking through them.
A Heart for Science

Bringing science to life

4 February 2025 3 min read

How do you spark an interest in sciences among young people? Two projects from the A Heart for Science series show how it can be done. Their tool of choice is hands-on experiments.


If you ask children about their dream jobs, they are most likely to name professions such as professional footballer, lawyer, doctor or astronaut. Science is hardly ever listed as their preferred career. Furthermore, children at this age are even less likely to aspire to study optics and photonics. At first glance, this is not surprising or even reprehensible. Certain interests must first be awakened in children. And the best way to do this is with exciting experiments that make you want to join in.

“Across Germany, we are seeing a decline in the number of first-year students in STEM subjects,“ says Dr. Max Gmelch. Gmelch holds a doctorate in physics and works as a science communicator for Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) in Germany. In his role, he has created a place that aims to get young people more interested in the natural sciences and research in optics in particular through panOPTICUM.

One day in optics

Enter panOPTICUM, a science center where school groups can gain exciting insights into optics and photonics through practical experiments they have carried out themselves such as making popcorn with focused heat radiation, storing shadows with phosphorescence or measuring your own smartphone with laser interference. In collaboration with the A Heart for Science team, the decision was taken to expand the exhibition to include two more items. The pupils who took part in this event in July called One Day in Optics were able to get involved in experiments and take part in laboratory tours and discussions for the first time in their lives.

They were accompanied by people from the student advisory service and science department and FAU students. “This gave the school groups the opportunity to talk to people who are currently following this path or have already done so,“ says Gmelch.

Dr. Ulrike Boehm from Corporate Research at ZEISS oversaw all the organization of the school trip. “It was really fun to set up something like this alongside research,“ summarizes Boehm. And the children in the school group were also enthusiastic about the event. “If everything works out, One Day in Optics will soon be held twice a year.“

Students participating in experiments in the field of optics and photonics.

The panOPTICUM inspires school groups with numerous experiments in optics and photonics they are able to do themselves.

A group photo of a school class during their visit to the panOPTICUM.

The pupils spent a whole day at panOPTICUM in Erlangen.

Trying things out instead of poring over books

Tamale, a city in northern Ghana, is situated just under 5,000 km south of Erlangen. Here, too, the natural sciences are not particularly popular with prospective students - albeit for different reasons. “For parents and teachers, medicine and law are the preferred courses of study here,“ says Dr. Fabian Ruf, Integrated Optics & Photonics Designer at ZEISS in Oberkochen and A Heart for Science volunteer. “Science does not tend to be considered a lucrative pursuit here.“ Another significant factor that makes it difficult for children and young people in Ghana to access the subject is the lack of appealing teaching materials. “I can fully understand that it‘s difficult to develop an enthusiasm for science when everything only takes place on paper,“ says Ruf.

A close-up of a hand holding a smartphone over a modular microscope. A microscopic view is visible on the smartphone screen. The microscope is housed in a transparent plastic box.

ZEISS provided the necessary materials and equipment for the project

To remedy this, he established contact with Ghanaian researchers via the international research organization, OPTICA, and worked with them and other partners to set up an outreach project that focused primarily on practical experimentation. On this occasion, the target group was not only the pupils, but also students from the university in Kumasi, who supported the project team as volunteers. “We described the experiments to them and developed a program together,“ says Ruf. “They then passed on their knowledge to the school children.”

Over three days, a total of 400 schoolchildren and 200 students from the local university were given an exciting insight into the world of optics and photonics through the lenses of the microscopes and telescopes. Fabian Ruf is pleased with the outcome. “It‘s just fun to see how enthusiastic the children were about the whole thing,” he says. “I‘m aware that you can‘t close any major knowledge gaps in three days. But perhaps we have inspired one or two of them to pursue a career in science. I would be very happy with that.”