Girls' Day 2021
Girls' Day is a countrywide event to introduce schoolgirls to disciplines and careers in which women are usually underrepresented. More information on this event can be found here.
This year, Girls' Day will take place on Thursday 22 April 2021, online.
W2W female scientists and colleagues at the meteorological institute at the LMU in Munich offered a workshop called "Das Wetter: Wind, Wolken und Wissenschaft" (in English: "The weather: wind, clouds and research"). The program of the workshop is available here. Ten girls between 12 and 14 years old from Munich, Hamburg, Bremen, Hanno-ver, Düsseldorf, etc. registered for the workshop. Two special guests also joined the workshop: Bernhard Mayer and the Bavarian state minister for culture and education, Michael Piazolo. The workshop started with a round of introduction where the participants briefly introduced themselves, described the weather where they live, and guessed the local temperature. A weather map was then produced using a Python script and based on these data points. This was a welcome opportunity to present the very first synoptic weather map from 1783 which had about the same amount of data points. Sheena Löffel, Theresa Diefenbach, Tabea Gleiter, Veronika Pörtge and Claudia Emde then introduced themselves and their research interests. Claudia offered a Monte Carlo game in which the participants roll a dice to identify the path of a photon through the atmosphere. A python script was written to simulate the game and Claudia ran it step by step to explain the basic notions of programming to the participants. The participants then made experiments to learn about pressure and wind with material that was sent to them beforehand. These experiments included the "kissing balloons", the "ping-pong funnel" and constructing an anemometer. To close the workshop, Veronika offered a weather briefing for the weekend. Below are some impressions of the workshop.
Top left: Temperature map of Germany with location of the participants. Top right: anemometer. Bottom: Kissing balloons.
W2W female scientists and colleagues at the Institute for Atmospheric Physics at the JGU in Mainz offered a workshop called "Was benötigt man für eine Wettervorhersage?" (in English: "What do we need to make a weather forecast?"). Ten girls from Hannover, Hamburg, Munich and Mainz participated. After a short introduction round where everybody looked out of the window and described the weather situation at their place, Volkmar Wirth explained the fascination of atmospheric dynamics with visually stunning movies. Franziska Köllner (postdoc at JGU) described her experience during a flight campaign in Spitzbergen where she even saw a polar bear. Isabelle Prestel-Kupferer then offered a short weather briefing and explained the temperature, pressure and wind distribution and how the cold but sunny conditions observed during the introduction round can be explained. Material to measure these variables were sent to the participants a few days earlier. A windmill and a wind vane were created together. Below is an impression of the workshop.
More details are available here.
At the Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research at KIT, Annika Oertel, Katharina Maurer and other KIT colleagues gave a virtual overview on how diverse Meteorology can be to sixteen school girls. Within 90 minutes, the participants learned about how weather occurs and how climate change impacts extreme weather events. In a joint experiment, the school girls were able to trigger and observe convection. Examples of extreme weather events were finally discussed all together. This was an exciting experience, both for the school girls and for the KIT colleagues! Below is an impression of the workshop.
Thank you to all the volunteers who made these workshops so exciting and successful!