Erfassen von Ursache-Wirkungs-Beziehungen in Flusslandschaften: Vermittlung von Systemwissen in Schulen als Beitrag für ein nachhaltiges Flussgebietsmanagement

A scientific understanding of the processes at work in river landscapes represents an important basis for including the local populace in effective and sustainable river landscape management. By conveying system-based knowledge to students, these future inhabitants and users of river landscapes will be better able to recognize contexts and connections, understand project-related decisions and policies, and support sustainable planning efforts. As such, in October 2012 the Austrian Federal Ministry for Science and Research started the “FlussAu:WOW!” project, part of the “Sparkling Science” research program. In the project, scientists work together with the students from two upper-level high-school classes over a period of two years, investigating research questions on river landscape management. The scientific goal of the project is to create a set of indicators to represent the functionality of floodplains. In the first school year, the researchers worked on key questions together with the students in workshops, performed field surveys and analyzed the results of fieldwork. In the subsequent discussions, the researchers constantly pointed out the complex interrelations at work in river-floodplain systems. Students’ knowledge was evaluated in pre-project and post-project tests. The analysis of the pre-tests revealed major knowledge gaps on questions concerning river landscape management, e.g. on factors that place major pressures on these regions. A comparison between the pre- and post-tests confirmed a significant improvement in the students’ factual knowledge after the first year; however, the post-project tests only showed a coupling of that knowledge with a recognition of cause-and-effect relations in sporadic cases. Beyond factual knowledge, it is above all a grasp of the interconnections between individual system elements that serves as an essential basis of education. Interactive, modern approaches are critical to conveying interdisciplinary knowledge. As part of the “FlussAu:WOW!” project, in the second school year system-based learning is implemented with the help of innovative modeling and simulation software. In both the pre- and post-tests, questions on the students’ interests revealed a high level of motivation to join in the research, and considerable interest in questions concerning nature and the environment. As a result, by the end of the first school year the cooperation between researchers, educators and students had already made a valuable contribution to sustainable river landscape management.     

Kaffee, Kakao, Thee

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Wein

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Gebrauchsgegenst?nde

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Allgemeine analytische Methoden und Apparate

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Microhardness of quenched and annealed isotactic polypropylene

The influence of molecular weight on the microhardness of quenched and subsequently annealed isotactic PP is shown. A clear dependence of microhardness on molecular weight and annealing temperature was detected. Even in the quenched state, where it was difficult to detect morphological differences between the materials, microhardness shows differences. In all states, quenched and annealed, the lower molecular weight samples have the higher hardness values. Up to an annealing temperature of 70 °C the hardness increases only slightly in all samples, above 80 °C a more pronounced increase was observed. For the microhardness of the samples annealed at 140 °C the ratio of the amorphous to the crystalline length is the dominating morphological parameter.