App “phyphox” Among Germany’s Ten Best Ideas for Science, Education, and Innovation

The Stifterverband’s anniversary initiative “Wirkung hoch 100” (Impact to the power of 100) is entering its third and final funding phase, and the project “phyphox” of RWTH Aachen University is part of it. Ten projects have now been selected in a multi-stage process that began in the fall of 2020 to find the best ideas for the future’s education, science, and innovation systems. These special projects will now receive a total of one million euros in funding. In November 2021, RWTH Aachen writes in a press release, the ten finalists will present their proposals for solving tricky science, education, and innovation challenges to the interested public to make them more visible and effective through networking with other stakeholders.

Learning via smartphone

The “phyphox” project is based on the app of the same name, which stands for physical phone experiments. The app uses the sensors built into every smartphone to conduct physics experiments. It was originally developed for physics lectures addressed to undergraduate students and first published in September 2016. Since then, it has quickly spread beyond this user base and has been installed more than 2 million times to date.

Many secondary school teachers and students work with the RWTH app. Thanks to many volunteers and supporters, phyphox is available in eighteen languages and has a network of phyphox ambassadors in 42 countries to date. The project was supported by RWTH Aachen University, the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), the German Stifterverband, a foundation that supports higher education in Germany, and the Hans Hermann Voss Foundation. Various awards have recognized the app’s great potential for innovative science education. phyphox is available for free and ad-free for both Android and iOS.