Long Night of Sciences (May 21, 2022)

On May 21st, 2022 from 6pm till midnight, the Long Night of Sciences was held in the region of Nuremberg, Fürth and Erlangen after pausing during the tough period of the pandemic.

At the Long Night, large scientific institutions like the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg hold lectures and demontrations for the general public in order to present themselves and to give a general overview of their research topics.

Our International Research Training Group „Energy Conversion Systems“ presented our research topics such as energy harvesting, piezoelectricity as well as perovskite solar cells. At our stand we made that topics accessible to the visitors.

A large portion of the IoT devices cannot be powered by batteries only anymore, as they will be installed in hard to reach areas and regular battery replacement and maintenance are infeasible. A viable solution is to scavenge and harvest energy from the environment and then provide enough energy to the devices to perform their operations. This will significantly increase the device life time and eliminate the need for the battery as an energy source. 

At our stand…

• we demonstrated an energy harvesting kit which converts mechanical vibrations into electrical energy using the piezoelectric effect. Its frequency and amplitude can be varied and so the amount of energy tuned.
• prepared a quiz which by visitors could prove their energy knowledge. If they checked our posters thouroughly, those who answered correctly received a matcha kit kat.
• we could also attract a lot of attention by our green tea station.
•