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Kleve / Kalkar. The Kleve vocational college and the secondary school in Kalkar were well represented in the Lower Rhine regional competition “Jugend forscht”. Among other things, the entry “If the brain is lame, it may be due to the intestines” Joshua Klösters and Till Möllmann from Klever Berufskolleg, the jury considered the entries from the Kleve district worthy of prizes: 3rd place in the chemistry category.
The article “From Popopuser to Pump Blocker” also gave a deep insight. The project by Jolina Schorpp (13) and Ruth Kruse (11) from the municipal secondary school in Kalkar seemed so convincing to the examiners that the students were able to present their experiment at the state competition in March. The duo took a clogged toilet as an opportunity to research what wet wipes cause in the toilet and how much toilet paper an adult uses per year.
“Leave the future there” – that was the motto this time under which the 142 approved project works were examined by 42 jurors. A total of 86 prizes have now been awarded, including 22 regional winners. Almost 900 people watched the online award ceremony. “It’s nice that despite the pandemic, we hardly had any slumps compared to previous years,” says Dr. Ralf Wimmer from the Niederrhein entrepreneurship. In the previous year, the 25th competition had to be canceled due to corona. The Niederrhein entrepreneurship has now proven that it can work almost as well virtually with enormous effort.
Since 1996, over 8,000 young researchers in the Lower Rhine have submitted more than 4,000 papers on technical and scientific topics. Once again, the most popular subjects were biology and chemistry. “We can rightly speak of the largest regional youth research competition nationwide. But the virtual implementation was a very special challenge, ”emphasizes Dr. Thomas Zöllner, the competition manager.
The participants between 9 and 19 years from a total of 33 schools come from Krefeld, Mönchengladbach and the districts of Heinsberg, Kleve, Neuss, Wesel and Viersen. The majority of schools are grammar schools. But six comprehensive schools, two secondary schools, one elementary school, two universities, a hospital foundation and a vocational college have submitted clever ideas.
Once again, the organizers praise the commitment and variety of ideas of the MINT-enthusiastic pupils, trainees and students. For the regional winners of the Lower Rhine competition, it goes on: The state competition “Jugend forscht” will take place from 22.-24. March at Bayer in Leverkusen; the state competition “Students experiment” is on 7./8. May at innogy in Essen. The national competition is in Heilbronn at the end of May. “We’ll keep our fingers crossed for you,” says Ralf Schwartz, wishing the young researchers luck and persuasion.
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