The Energy of Life – EMBL at “Explore Science” festival

Five thousand visitors discovered “The Energy of Life” in the EMBL tent at the “Explore Science” festival held at Luisenpark Mannheim, Germany between 21 and 25 June 2017.

Neither the hot weather with temperatures of up to 38°C, nor the occasional thunderstorm warning could deter 45,500 people from attending one of Germany’s largest science festivals. In the midst of a beautiful recreational park with flower beds, water features and playgrounds, visitors had the opportunity to go on an “energy adventure”, as the motto of the “Explore Science” festival promised. Tents of hands-on activities, school workshops, interactive exhibitions and science shows offered something for everyone, be it school kids, families or science enthusiasts.

Yeast as star of EMBL tent

The EMBL tent with the motto “The Energy of Life” welcomed visitors to dive into the fascinating world of biological energy. At the 50 m² space, young and old could investigate the central question of how living organisms produce energy – and meet the true star of the stall: yeast.

In a hands-on experiment on yeast metabolism, keen visitors turned into scientists and made baking yeast blow up balloons (when feeding on sugar, yeast produces the gas carbon dioxide). Not surprisingly, particularly popular among young visitors was the cell-cookie station where cheerful kids built their own “yeast cells” using rice waffles and sweets. Zooming to the microscopic level, actual cells of baking yeast and fungi isolated from yoghurt and kefir featured at the microscopy station. A 3D puzzle of animal and plant cells attracted crowds eager to compete for the quickest completion time.

Buzzing atmosphere

The EMBL activities at “Explore Science” were run by the European Learning Laboratory for the Life Sciences (ELLS), EMBL’s education facility. The staff of ELLS were supported by a team of 20 enthusiastic helpers from within EMBL and outside, including EMBL scientists and teenage students part of the “Friends of EMBL” programme.

It is the first year that EMBL is taking part in the festival and the buzzing atmosphere in the tent pleasantly surprised Agnes Szmolenszky, head of ELLS: “We were truly amazed by the huge interest that our stall received – people spent quite some time with the activities and really immersed themselves into the science”.

Besides the activities in the tent, ELLS also ran two workshops for primary and lower secondary school classes on “The Microbiology of Bread Making”.

Happy tent visitors, happy helpers and happy organisers: there is a good chance that EMBL will take part in the festival again in future years.

The picture gallery gives impressions of the EMBL tent at the “Explore Science” festival, an annual event organised by the Klaus Tschira Stiftung (Klaus Tschira Foundation).