This requires some skill with a soldering iron: During Girls' Day, girls got to make earrings shine in their favorite colors.
© HZB
83 pupils at Girls'Day at HZB
The girls created some amazing pieces of jewelry!
© HZB
Wearing lab coats, the girls explored the world of electrochemistry.
© HZB
The girls also discovered exciting experiments in the school lab at HZB.
© HZB
How can table tennis balls be packed as tightly as possible—and what does that tell us about the crystal structures of materials?
© HZB
Auf die Details kommt es an: Mädchen beim Mikroskopieren.
© HZB
How can electricity be generated using the sun? Among other things, the students learned how to produce low-cost perovskite solar cells.
© HZB
Amazement at the sight of the accelerator: The Metrology Light Source was shut down specifically to give the students a glimpse inside the accelerator.
© HZB
Tracking down molecules: In the lab, the girls use a microscope for chemical compounds (NMR spectroscopy) to find out which molecules are in their solutions.
© HZ
On 23 April 2026, the annual Girl’s Day took place, giving pupils an insight into various career paths in the fields of science and technology. 83 pupils visited the Adlershof and Wannsee sites and enjoyed a day full of exciting experiments.
By taking part in various workshops, the girls were able to gain an insight into careers such as physicist, engineer and chemist.
Girls’ Day is an important initiative designed to inspire pupils to take an interest in science and technology and to encourage them to pursue careers in these fields.
HZB’s research topics were explored in a fun and engaging way across 16 different workshops.
Wannsee:
- Jules Verne’s dream: water as the coal of the future
- Using colours, electricity and chemistry, we make the invisible visible!
- Kitchen Tetris in the canteen’s shell
- Basics of HTML & CSS
- Atom by atom – thin films for the technology of the future
- Crystals – how are they structured and how can they be studied?
- Creative programming
Smart wires in the student lab
Adlershof:
- Particle accelerators – big and small
- Hot Stuff – solar energy you can touch (almost!)
- Soldering LED earrings
- The daily work of laboratory technicians at HZB and the production of perovskite solar cells
- The power of metadata: tagging, searching, finding!
- Chocolate lithography and what it has to do with solar cells
- Light programming: a creative introduction to programming
- Molecule detectives: searching for clues with NMR
We would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to all our colleagues whose dedication helped ensure that Girls’ Day at HZB could take place with such a diverse and exciting range of workshops.
The next opportunity to get to know us and carry out small experiments yourself will be at the Long Night of Science on 6 June at the HZB Adlershof site. With lots of exciting activities especially for children and young people!
- A Story of Baking a CrystalOnce upon a time, I was a kid who loved doing home experiments and unravel the explanation behind everyday phenomena. This passion and curiosity helped me to land up here in Berlin to work on the growth of crystalline materials at the wonderful campus of Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin. But unlike many other stories, mine starts with an introductory question: What makes growing crystals fun and also challenging?
- The Art of the UnknownThe first major challenge was facing my own initial lack of knowledge. Suddenly, I found myself surrounded by entirely new protocols: what can be touched with gloves, what is strictly glove-free, and how to safely move items through the space. As I did not fully know how new equipment operates, getting startled when something goes off-routine is inevitable.
- Special prize by Jugend Forscht awarded to former school internShaoxuan Wang has won a special prize in the Jugend Forscht competition for her project ‘Smart Capsules – intelligent microcapsules for glucose-dependent insulin release’. She designed the project as a “special achievement” for her A-levels. To carry out the experimental work, Shaoxuan was able to spend a further two weeks in the laboratory at the HZB Institute for Electrochemical Energy Storage, where she had completed a school internship two years earlier.