Students at Albert Einstein Academy Charter School in South Park marked the physicist’s birthday with a day devoted to innovation. They saw how German companies operating in San Diego have turned science and experimentation into business opportunities.
Middle schoolers spent the day hearing and seeing how the science they learn about in class translates into real world products built by the German companies Bosch and Siemens Home Appliance Group, Carl Zeiss Vision and ThyssenKrupp Bilstein.
Germany’s Honorary Consul in San Diego, Stephan Hollmann, helped bring the companies to the school, which houses the county’s largest German immersion program.
”The purpose it serves is the awakening of curiosity, to say be curious about how technology and science work together and what it could mean for you in the future,” he said.
Seventh grader Chris Griffin was impressed with what he learned during the day’s first demonstration by a representative from Carl Zeiss Vision about optics.
”You can easily make a homemade telescope, you don’t have to buy really any material except for the lenses,” Griffin said. He said he already enjoys his science classes, especially learning about plants and how humans use them.
Another seventh grader, Katie Lias, said she can see how the experiments from her science classes might apply to some of the things the companies demonstrated.
“I saw the shock absorbers," she said, "and I thought they were really cool because when it’s not clean it produces foam and you have to put air in it to clean it.”
Lias said she plans on taking more science classes in high school because she thinks there's just a lot more to learn.
German General Consul Bernd Fischer said a trade treaty being negotiated between the U.S. and the European Union could link the two economies more closely. And that could pay off with jobs for students who pursue a scientific education, and who speak a little of the language from his home country, which he called a European economic powerhouse.
