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Waage mit zwei Figuren und einem Sternchen, Schriftzug Gleichstellungsbüro
Studierende sitzt am Arbeitsplatz und schaut auf den Laptop. © Aliona Kardash​/​TU Dortmund
MinTU - Girls at TU Dortmund University

MINT workshops online

Ein Schriftzug, der auf Online Workshops hinweist © Timmreck​/​TU Dortmund
The year in the mentoring program for schoolgirls "MinTU - Mädchen in die TU Dortmund" would normally have taken place at TU Dortmund University. Almost 50 girls were supposed to visit the campus and eight departments. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the concept was rethought: the departments visited the schoolgirls, not the other way around.

In order to offer the girls as impressive an insight into the departments as possible despite all the obstacles, the mentees received mail with small tasks throughout the MinTU year.
The Architecture and Civil Engineering department, for example, had its own "craft kit" consisting of skewers and rubber bands. The task was to use them to build a tower as high as possible, which ideally also had to pass an earthquake wobble test and a foehn wind test. Some of the towers were built together via video conference so that the mentors could give helpful tips. The tallest towers were up to 1.40 meters high and were of course documented and compared photographically.

In the live workshop "The vastness of space", the team led by Dr. Sylvia Rückheim, head of the school laboratory, brought physics into the girls' rooms at home. The girls were given information, instructions and craft materials in advance so that they could take part in the experiments shown in the workshop live. The mentees experienced the launch into space with self-made effervescent rockets. The mentees discussed the various conditions that prevail in space in breakout sessions with their mentors. Weightlessness was also simulated at their desks at home using a jam jar, straw and plasticine. The girls all agreed that the workshop was a lot of fun, but not as much fun as a real meeting!

A team from the Department of Statistics guided the mentees through various experiments in break-out sessions. The experiment "Man as a random generator" tested how randomly you really decide as a lottery player. In the "word game", mentees and mentors found out what randomness means by spontaneously assigning words to each other in two groups. By throwing matches onto a lined sheet of paper, they were able to find out the probability of a match cutting one of the lines in the "needle/matchstick experiment". And finally, the "dice experiment" was used to calculate the best bet to achieve the maximum win in a game of dice. The results were evaluated and presented using programs developed by the statisticians. This gave the participants an exciting insight into the basics of probability theory.

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