astro-lab.app
Astronaut on the moon

Open Educational Resources

astro-lab.app

Smartphone experiments and teaching materials for astronomy and space physics.

Browse experiments

11

Experiments

27

Publications

CC BY

Open Licence

What’s here

Experiments, materials, resources

01

Smartphone Experiments

Most experiments use sensors already in your phone — light meter, accelerometer, gyroscope, camera. Some setups add external hardware via Bluetooth. Instructions are in German and English.

02

Open Educational Resources

Every worksheet, dataset, and guide is released under an open license. Download, adapt, and use in class without registration or restrictions.

03

Videos

Each experiment links to a short video showing the setup and what to expect. Useful before the first run, or when something isn't behaving as expected.

Astronaut on a spacewalk

Astronomy · Physics · Education

Measure before you theorise

A smartphone contains an accelerometer, a barometer, a light sensor, and a camera. These experiments treat them as instruments — each with a defined procedure, a dataset to record, and a direct connection to something observable in the sky.

Open Educational Resources

Experiments

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References

Publications

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Collaboration

Partners

phyphox logo — RWTH Aachen University

phyphox

RWTH Aachen University

phyphox turns a smartphone into a data logger. The app reads from built-in sensors — accelerometer, barometer, light, microphone — and from external Bluetooth hardware. Most experiments on this site use phyphox for measurement and data export.

Institute of Physics Education logo — University of Cologne

Institute of Physics Education

University of Cologne

The Institute of Physics Education at the University of Cologne supports the development of the teaching materials and co-authors the academic publications that accompany this project.

Physics Reimagined logo — University Paris-Saclay

Physics Reimagined

University Paris-Saclay

Physics Reimagined develops teaching sequences and visualization tools for modern physics — including superconductivity, quantum optics, and cosmology — at Paris-Saclay.

LekkerWissen logo — Science Communication

LekkerWissen

Science Communication

LekkerWissen produces short science explanation videos for YouTube. Several videos are linked directly from experiment pages to show setup and expected results.

Who we are

Team

The project is maintained by two physicists from Cologne.

Sebastian J. Spicker — Physicist, Developer

Sebastian J. Spicker

Physicist, Developer

Physics graduate, University of Cologne. Researcher at the Future Strategy of Teacher Education (University of Cologne). Published in The Physics Teacher and CAPjournal. Currently in IT at the Cologne University of Music.

Dr. Alexander Küpper — Physicist, Teacher, Researcher

Dr. Alexander Küpper

Physicist, Teacher, Researcher

Doctorate from the Institute of Physics Education, University of Cologne. Founded the 'Search for Earth 2.0' student laboratory — the predecessor to astro-lab.app. Published in A+R, MNU-Journal, and NwU Physik. Currently teaching physics at a secondary school near Cologne.