After a thorough safety introduction, the schedule was packed with nanowire-based solar cells for space applications, fluorescence, microfluidic experiments, pulse laser deposition, quantum dots, light-guiding nanowires, and even a barrier development session at Tetra Pak.
One of three high school students who chose to spend the first two weeks of their summer vacation at NanoLund was Dante Richard from Hässleholms Tekniska skola.
“I heard about the opportunity from a teacher at school. Before the visit, I had no idea how nanoscience could be used in practice, and that it took a long time for major discoveries to be made in the field. With the visit, this view changed a lot as we got to see several different applications for nanotechnology”‚ he says.
“The theoretical explanations, even though they were sometimes difficult to understand, were what I enjoyed the most during the visits. The theory made me realize how what we learn in school is applied in research, which was an important part of the experience for me.”
New perspectives on physics and nanoscience
“The fact that quantum physics was somewhat understandable was the strangest thing during the visit, as quantum physics has been a big question mark for me before. I am taking with me knowledge about how research can be conducted as well as a new perspective on physics and nanoscience.”
Quantum physics has been a big question mark for me.
Together with Felix Pikkemat from Filbornaskolan in Helsingborg and Isak Ripa from S:t Petri skola in Malmö, Dante Richard got the scholarship after being recommended by their teachers to apply. The scholarship is a part of a programme, Forskningsnätet Skåne, (Researcher’s net, Skåne), which is an association of schools in Skåne that have decided to give high priority to scientific perspectives in their teaching. Since its start in 2012, many young students have had the opportunity to get acquainted with the everyday life of a researcher. Some twenty different departments and institutions at Lund University, Malmö University, and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences participate.