I have chosen the topic for my Facharbeit by myself and asked my physics teacher to supervise my work. He immediately agreed, probably also, because he himself wanted to learn more about the subject I was going to work on. But he made a condition that I should focus on physical aspects and exclude as far as possible chemical ones, as his knowledge in chemistry is not very good. It is a general problem with interdisciplinary topics to find teachers who feel competent enough to supervise such a work.

Further on my teacher expressed his doubts, if he could manage to do a good guiding work, because he had not got much experience in this — the Facharbeit is a rather new construct.

It is not very encouraging for students, if the experts who have to guide their works feel unsure in doing this. In my case, I was lucky to have my father from whom I could expect support in specialist knowledge questions.