PhotonLab

For 13 years, students have been visiting the PhotonLab to explore the fundamentals of quantum physics. Through guided tours of the institute, hands-on experiments, and lectures, they learn how light and matter interact and discover the role of quantum particles as the building blocks of matter. Recently, the student lab reached a special milestone: Silke Stähler-Schöpf, head of the MPQ student lab, and her team welcomed its twenty-two thousand two hundred and twenty-second guest. more

For over a decade, Dr Silke Stähler-Schöpf has led the MPQ Student Lab PhotonLab with impressive success: this year alone, around 3, 000 students visited the PhotonLab to explore experiments on lasers, light, and quantum physics. For her extensive contributions to physics education and outreach, Silke Stähler-Schöpf receives the 2025 Georg-Kerschensteiner Prize, awarded annually by the German Physical Society.
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Attention quantum friends! As part of the new communication and education project Quanten(t)räume of the Deutsches Museum and other institutions in Munich, the MPQ school laboratory PhotonLab is now for the first time offering visits to anyone aged 14 and interested in quantum physics. More than 20 different experimental stations are waiting to help grasp the basics of quantum physics and to learn how these phenomena shape our technologies today and in the future. On Friday per month, starting October. more

After the successful live premiere weekend on June 29 and 30, 2024 at the “Münchner Wissenschaftstage / forscha” and the “Festival der Zukunft” at the Deutsches Museum, the third episode of the German language radio play “Alice im Quantenland” is now available to listen to on all popular streaming portals. This time, Alice, Schrödinger and Rabbit go to the quantum fair, where there are once again some unusual things to discover and experience. more

A packed programme awaited this year's Girls' Day participants. In addition to talks by Dr Silke Stähler-Schöpf, head of the school laboratory, and PhD student Maya Büki, the day's main theme was "try it yourself". In the Photonlab school laboratory, the participants had a go at the various experiments and learnt about physical phenomena in a fun way - in particular, how lasers work, which play an important role in the institute's research. more