A Vien­nese School, the “Theodor Kramer School”, is the first and coun­try wide only high school, to own a trans­mis­sion elec­tron micro­scope, as it is used in mate­r­ial sci­ences and life sci­ences. Start­ing Sep­tem­ber 2016, pupils are invited to wit­ness this fas­ci­nat­ing tech­nol­ogy live, carry out their own exper­i­ments, and learn with and from pro­fes­sion­als in the field.

I think our chil­dren will greatly ben­e­fit from this micro­scope … it makes a huge dif­fer­ence if you look at those tiny struc­tures in a book or “live”, in a big­ger con­text and at dif­fer­ent mag­ni­fi­ca­tionsCath Schrempf, parent’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive

Together with the gen­er­ous sup­port of JEOL Ger­many, the Vienna Bio­cen­ter Core Facil­i­ties (VBCF), AGAR Sci­en­tific, Plano, and FIAS this extra­or­di­nary project was put in place: Nex­pe­rion con­tributed by plan­ning and man­ag­ing the move and instal­la­tion of a sec­ond hand JEOL JEM 1210 equipped with a 11 megapixel CCD cam­era. Train­ing teach­ers and stu­dents, help­ing them along with their exper­i­ments, and giv­ing pro­fes­sional input is part of a long term spon­sor­ship com­mit­ment of Nex­pe­rion. “The instal­la­tion was quite chal­leng­ing,” says Guenter Resch, founder and owner of Nex­pe­rion. “The school was not exactly equipped to facil­i­tate a high tech device of this size.” After lots of fid­dling, the only suf­fi­ciently large room for instru­ment and vis­i­tors was found in the base­ment and adapted to fit the microscope’s needs.

The elec­tron micro­scope will be used in diverse sub­jects such as biol­ogy, physics, chem­istry, and crafts, under the super­vi­sion of spe­cially trained teach­ers from these fields. It will also be avail­able for pupils from other schools in the Vienna area via ded­i­cated work­shops.

Asked about Nexperion’s moti­va­tion to con­tribute time and finan­cial resources to this project, Guenter Resch explained that being able to spark the fas­ci­na­tion of sci­ence and to observe the edu­ca­tional devel­op­ment of these young stu­dents – the future sci­en­tists of our coun­try — was extremely reward­ing and joy­ful for him.

To learn more, visit the project page at the school’s web­site (in Ger­man only).