On April 23rd, we were happy to welcome five science-interested female students from grades eight to ten of schools near Stuttgart at our institute to spend the Girls’ Day with us. After the general welcoming to the University of Stuttgart by equal opportunity officer Dr. Grazia Lamanna, we showed the students around Campus Vaihingen and introduced our institute to them. Under the theme “Program Your Robot!”, the students studied the basics of programming and used their skills to program Ringo robot cars in an interactive project. The robots are equipped with several features such as various LEDs, two rotating legs for transport as well as two light-sensitive detectors. The goal was to program the robot such that it can follow a black line with lots of curves on a white surface. Although it was easy to grasp the concept of writing a program and controlling the robot, it was quite difficult and took lots of experimenting in tuning Ringo's parameters to complete the task flawlessly. The students were eager to try science for themselves. During lunch at the Mensa, they had a further chance to get in touch and to ask all of their questions. For the final get-together, we surprised them with homemade chocolate liquid nitrogen ice cream, which was a real eye-catcher and a fun experience. A few impressions can be seen below. Overall, it was a great day for experiencing science in a fun way and we are looking forward to the next Girls’ Day in 2027. Further information on the Girls’ Day event can be found here.
Girls’ Day Team 2026: Rebecca Stephan and Lena Tarrach, supported by Julia Hickl and Niklas Müller
