Workshops for primary and secondary schools

Push an object and it moves. Pull it and it comes back. But who tells it when to stop? Forces are everywhere: they keep your feet on the ground, make a sled slide, spin-dry your salad, and press you into your seat on a carousel. In this workshop we'll put them to the test: pushing, pulling, dropping, and sliding all kinds of things to discover what makes the world move – and what keeps it still.​

What makes bread so fluffy or yogurt so creamy? Let's find out together in this adventure into the world of fermentation! We'll take a journey to discover microorganisms: the ones found in our body but also in the foods we eat. And bacteria? Are they always bad? We'll learn what they are and how they grow, how we can observe them up close, and above all, how these microorganisms transform everyday ingredients into surprising foods through a chemical process called fermentation.

Programming a robot without a digital screen? It is possible! In this workshop, we immerse ourselves in the world of robots, understand how they “think” and learn how to interact with them.

Where do our emotions come from? What happens in our brains when we are scared or when we laugh? Through experiments and hands-on activities, we will try to understand what happens in our bodies when we feel something and discover whether science has found ways to measure and understand our emotions.

Discover what energy is and how insulating and conductive materials work. We construct an electrical circuit with copper wire, batteries and light bulbs. Then, we use a microprocessor to explore how energy “flows”. It’s not magic, it’s the power of knowledge!

Playing with Lego is fun, right? Absolutely! But what if our creations could move and transform into miniature robots? In this workshop, we learn the basics of construction and robot programming in a fun way. Sounds cool, doesn’t it?

What do we eat? And more importantly, why do we eat? Simple chemistry experiments will help us understand the ingredients in our food and why they are so important for our health and growth.

Using colourful building blocks, cables, motors and sensors, we build a group of robots that cooperate with each other: a real “intelligent system” that we will program with a tablet. Along the way, we will show you how block programming works.

Our climate is changing rapidly, and its effects are felt daily across the globe: extreme droughts, floods, and an unprecedented rise in temperatures. To make the complex dynamics behind this phenomenon more tangible and easier to understand, intertwining science, economics, and social dynamics, we have developed a board game that simulates the challenges of climate change. This workshop offers a practical and interactive approach to exploring the global strategies currently underway and the crucial role of scientific research. Together, we can experience firsthand the delicate balances and compromises required to confront the climate challenge: will you play with us?

Microscopes, micropipettes and molecules: in this workshop, we follow in the footsteps of the researchers working in Eurac Research’s biomedical laboratories. We learn how to use laboratory instruments. And we analyse the results of our experiments to learn new things about cells, DNA and bacteria.

We often think of agriculture as a very traditional industry... But in reality, it is not. Farms are becoming more and more “smart”: farmers use various sensors to monitor plants and harvests and use increasingly autonomous machines to perform the more strenuous tasks. We will try this out for ourselves on a small scale, using sensors and microprocessors to monitor the condition of plants and soil.