With many eye-opening experiments, he explained the second law of thermodynamics on Tuesday evening. He offered an insight into the world of heat and chaos, while the little students had to cuddle up in the packed lecture hall on the TUM campus.
What does herbal tea have to do with chemistry? Burger brewed a cup of tea at the beginning, not to enjoy, but to observe. During the course of the lecture, the children were able to find out: The thermometer in the cup drops steadily. Similarly, blue food coloring mixed in a glass of water. The most identifiable example was the untidy playroom, which cannot tidy itself. These observations can be explained by the second law of thermodynamics: Clutter does not diminish on its own.
In tea, the heat particles in the tea mix with the cold particles outside. The lecturer used red and blue Lego bricks to illustrate the law of nature. As the number of Lego bricks increases, there are still only two ways of sorting the bricks by color. Even with a hundred bricks, it is impossible for them to be tidied up by themselves. Of course, parents like to hear that. But how can order be restored? Using a magic glove, Burger filmed how he unusually rearranged dozens of mixed paper balls into two colors. The attentive students immediately realized that this couldn't be right. It was just a video recorded backwards.
Things can't tidy themselves up
This proved the lecturer's main point: Through experience, the children knew deep down that this was not possible. Because things cannot naturally tidy themselves up, a lesson to remember the next time you play and tidy up.
With that, the last lecture of the summer semester came to an end with bubbling questions. The next Children's University lecture will be in November. However, the naturalist program is currently still running, where you can take part in excursions and workshops in the field of biology. More information can be found on the Children's University website at www.kinderuni-straubing.de.
