LMU climate kit
The scientific background and consequences of climate change can be made experimentally tangible for students with the experiments in the climate kit.
With relatively simple setups, various scientific relationships can be investigated in student experiments, from the absorption of thermal radiation by CO2, to the albedo effect, to the acidification of the oceans.
Report in the Journal of the German Physics society about the climate kit.
Der Treibhauseffekt ist der zentrale Effekt welcher den Klimawandel bedingt. Dem zu Grunde liegt die Wärmeabsorption durch CO2, welche in Aktivtiät 5 veranschaulicht wird. Die Hintergründe und Modellbeschreibungen zu diesem Experiment finden Sie hier:
Hintergrund und Bemerkungen zum Experiment zur Wärmeabsorption durch CO2
The climate case is produced by the Caritas workshop in Munich-Dachau and can be ordered directly there using the order form.
FLIR thermal imaging cameras can also be ordered there at special conditions via the TOPA company.
We kindly ask you not to send any order requests to the LMU.
Here we provide answers to frequently asked questions regarding the climate kit:
The LMU climate kit can be delivered within 4 weeks.
The LMU climate kit can be delivered within 4 weeks.
Work instructions for the experiments are available for download free of charge in chapter 7 of the Climate Change Manual. Please note that we do not consider these descriptions to be ready-made copy templates or worksheets! For adaptation to the individual teaching situation, we provide editable versions of the descriptions in the materials for the individual activities (see below).
A pool of different materials, suitable for the activities of the climate kit, is available in our Teaching Modules.
Materials for the individual activities:
Materialien zu den einzelnen Aktivitäten:
- Activtity 1: Earth in the solar system
- Activity 2: Radiation equilibrium on Earth
- Activity 3: Making thermal radiation visible
- Activity 4: Earth's radiation balance
- Activity 5: Effects of greenhouse gases
- Activity 6: Sea level rise
- Activity 7: Climate zones and climate change
- Activity 8: The oceans as a climate buffer
- Activity 9: Ocean acidification
- Activity 10: Release of CO2 by the oceans
- Activity 11: Tipping points when the climate tilts
- Activity 12: Tipping points: Achilles heel in the climate system
All background texts for the activities (to be printed out on A3) collected for Download.
The templates to cut out can be found here: Part 1 PDF / PPT – Part 2: PDF / PPT.
We can offer the LMU climate kit without thermal imaging camera for 319€ incl. shipping. With this amount, the Caritas workshop Dachau, which manages the production, orders the individual parts and the necessary material and covers the costs for production, storage and distribution.
The LMU does not make any profit with the LMU climate kit!
We can offer thermal imaging cameras of the manufacturer FLIR through the company TOPA offers at very reasonable prices (from 225,70€). Depending on your needs, four different versions are available.
Directly to the order website for LMU climate kit and thermal imaging camera here.
Even with one or two LMU climate kits (and some additional tripod material), you can work well with a group of students as part of a climate change workshop. The students then work on the various topics covered by the LMU climate kit at different experiment stations in the form of a learning circle. However, sufficient time should be allocated to carry out such a workshop.
In order to be able to offer selected experiments, thematically and didactically suitable for the current lessons, as student experiments (e.g. on the greenhouse effect), it can also be useful to work with several LMU climate kits in order to be able to offer several thematically suitable stations in parallel.
The goal of our educational program is to get students to act by understanding the background of climate change - not to sell LMU climate kits!
Therefore, we provide the LMU climate kit for replication under the Creative Commons license: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. The production plan, with all the info needed to rebuild it, will be updated soon. The previous version is available here.
We look forward to hearing from you if you have any questions or have successfully rebuilt the LMU climate kit!
We consider working with the thermal imaging camera to be a valuable didactic building block for understanding the greenhouse effect - however, ten and a half of the twelve activities from the LMU climate kit can be carried out without it.
A thermal imaging camera is required for Activity 3 "The Earth, a Radiant Planet" as well as for Part II of Activity 5 "The Effect of Greenhouse Gases." The additional experiment in Part I of Activity 5 ("Transmission of thermal radiation") can also be carried out with an inexpensive infrared thermometer.
If you would like to support our project, we would be very happy about your donation!
If you have any questions about the ordering process or if parts of the climate kit have been damaged during shipping or while working with students, please contact the Caritas workshop directly.
- Questions about your order and delivery, Ms. Brigitte Kunert +49 8131 3229612, g213-wfb-dah-02@caritasmuenchen.de
- Complaint processing, Mr. Josip Lovric +49 8131 3229628, g213-wfb-dah-14@caritasmuenchen.de
In case of problems with a thermal imaging camera ordered through us, please contact klimakoffer@topa.de.
For all other concerns about our educational program Climate Change:Understand and Act, please contact us via our contact form below or by email at kontakt@klimawandel-schule.de.
The LMU climate kit is licensed under the Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). Therefore, any use and mention of the LMU climate kit should use the following wording: "LMU climate kit" or "Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität climate kit".
In the TerraX broadcast “A case for Lesch and Steffens - the truth about the lie” the experiment on the absorption of thermal radiation by CO2 was shown (from min. 37:30). We have compiled a detailed description and scientific background to this experiment here.
The LMU climate kit of the Faculty of Physics of LMU Munich is licensed under the following Creative Commons license: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0