Black-and-white photo of an Apollo exhibition with a lunar module model and a spacesuit

The project

About astro-lab.app

astro-lab.app is a collection of astronomy experiments and teaching materials for physics education. The focus is on measurements you can make with a smartphone and what those numbers tell you about the universe.

Experiments cover topics from planetary albedo and exoplanet transits to distance measurement and star formation. Most materials are available in German and English and are released as open educational resources — free to download, adapt, and use.

Collaboration

Partners

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

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

University Paris-Saclay

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

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

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

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.