3D-Shadows
Shadows gain depth. Illuminated with red and green light, a tetrahedron casts a red and a green shadow on the screen. Viewed through glasses with red and…
847 Compass needles
Magnetic Domains. There are 847 compass needles attached to a disc. Because they are so close together, they influence each other. With a magnet, the compass…
A riddle for intelligent and patient people
Puzzles for the sharp-minded and patient. Trickier than it seems: these eleven puzzles with strings, boards, and rings are challenging. One of them cannot be…
A Table with loose Legs
Three, two, one – stable. How many supports do we need to stabilize a tabletop? Without screws, without glue, of course. Sharp-minded (and experimental)…
Alike and unalike
The illusion of inequality. Two identical wooden arcs lie side by side. The inner one appears larger, but it isn’t. For circular arcs, the outer edge is…
All Triangels are the same
Central projection: Using various triangular shapes to cast congruent shadows onto a patterned wall with equilateral triangles.
Ambiguous Figures
Clearly ambiguous. One object, two forms: “Necker cubes” belong to the category of ambiguously perceivable objects. Perceiving spatial dimensions and depth:…
Angled Mirrors
Many polygons. Two mirrors positioned around an axis at various angles: a simple way to create shapes with many sides (polygons). At certain angles,…
Ball in a Bowl
Shorter path = faster to the goal? A question that occupied the best mathematicians three hundred years ago. This competition compares two parallel tracks,…
Beam Bridge
The simplest form, but not the most stable. This bridge demonstrates the forces acting on a straight beam when it is loaded and supported only at its two…
Break the code
Qxpoa gvp pbuu: Cryptography. An encrypted text appears on the monitor. The challenge is to decrypt it with as few errors as possible. But there are over four…
Bridge the Gap
Building bridges is not so easy - especially when you are not allowed to use nails, screws or glue! Here you only have nine identical wooden blocks at your…
Catenary Arch
Building solid – like the Romans. An arch as a delicate structure: reconstructing what the Romans perfected. Understanding what gives their elegant arches…
Chance Happenings
Capturing randomness – with dice. Four faces of these dice are white. The other two faces show a red circle. After each roll, the dice with the red circle…
Changing Sides
A wire cube rotates in front of a mirror. If you squint one eye and fix a front corner of the wire cube, you see a certain direction of rotation. If you now…
Christmas Balls
Round shapes, angular gaps. The spheres are indeed round, despite the triangular gaps between them. Can this really be? If a sphere is missing in the…
Circular Deformations
Patterns come to life. Ovals form around stationary circles. Funnels emerge, cones rise. Curved lines perform a serpentine dance. Images that, when observed…
Geometric shapes come to life. What we think we see in the shapes of spinning discs! Ovals wrapping around stationary circles. Cones wobbling in a…
Coarse or Fine
Texture and perception. One hand strokes coarse sandpaper. The other hand strokes fine sandpaper. Then both hands simultaneously stroke sandpaper with medium…
Cold Test
Four degrees – only relatively cold. Touch the metal rods, please. Yes, they’re really cold. Almost painful. How painful is this brief contact? This…
Conic Sections with Laser
Ellipse, parabola, hyperbolic branch, or hyperbolic arm: Cross-sections of a plane through a geometric body. In this case, a cone. A laser beam circling the…
Conway Cube
Test your spatial imagination. Assemble nine pieces to form a cube. Three 1x1x1 cubes and six 2x2x1 cuboids. It seems simple, what the renowned British…
Coupled magnetic sculpture
Transmit motion without contact. Magnets are attached to the spokes of several wheels, which influence each other. If you turn one of the wheels, the…
Crooked Tiles
Cafe Wall Illusion: the tile deception. These parallel lines really seem tilted! The black and white squares can be arranged in stripes or offset into a…
Delayed Viewing
Acting and seeing with a time delay. Catching fish with a fishing line: normally, it’s simple enough, as the magnet on the line is easy to guide. But it gets…
Dialog in the Vase
Vase with two faces. At some point, the image flips: first, it’s a vase. It rotates. Wait! There are two faces. Two people talking to each other. Two…
Diced Snake
At some point, it’s probably going to work... All sixty dice lined up: what number shows the head of the snake? Now move forward by that number. Roll the…
Different Discs
Estimating and weighing. Visual context and the expectations it creates: wood is lighter than metal, obviously. Or is it? What weight do we expect when…
Disappearing Ghost
The ghost disappears. Where did it go? The ghost reappears. Where did it come from? A puzzle made of three parts: one base element, two pieces to swap. How…
Distorted Room (Ames Room)
Little one grows tall. An absolutely ordinary room, at least when viewed through the peephole. But wait, the little brother grows taller than the big sister…
Distorting faces
by Niclas Roy A whole row of screens each shows the viewer's face. If you hold a magnet to the screen, the electrons in it are deflected, distorting the image.
Do they fit in the Box?
Too big. Or is it? The cube fits into the glass cube. Clear enough. But the pyramid, the star-shaped object? Too big. Some objects appear larger than they…
Drawing on the Move
Elegant circles, spirals, and ellipses. Above a disc with variable rotational speed lies a ruler. If the pen is held still along the ruler, circles are drawn.…
Efron’s Dice
Loaded dice. The numbers on the faces of these four dice are nothing like what we’re used to. And they really get your brain working. The first player picks…
Electromagnetic cannon
Which ring flies the furthest? The electromagnetic cannon consists of a coil with an iron core that can be abruptly energised at the push of a button. If…
Electromagnetic puppet theatre
Electricity moves magnets. Three stations each contain four coils whose frequency and phase shift can be adjusted. Figures with magnetic legs can be placed on…
Electromagnetic railway
Electric current produces a magnetic field. A track with a magnetic toy train on it runs through a large coil. At the push of a button, current flows through…
Elliptical Mirror
This έλλειψις has only one goal. At one focus of this mirrored ellipse stands a rotating periscope. At the other focus, a colored cone. Looking at the…
Emotion detector
Measuring skin resistance. The skin resistance is influenced by the subject's emotions: the stronger the emotions, the lower the resistance. Here, the skin…
Encoding Text - Caesar’s disc
« Caesar’s Wheel » Encoding and decoding with two rows of letters that can be shifted relative to each other. Even in Caesar’s time, information was protected…
Equal Times
Meeting – in the middle. On this track, a tautochrone, the time it takes for a ball to reach the lowest point is always the same. If we release two balls,…
Escher’s endless Staircase
Ascending downwards. Luckily, this infinite staircase doesn’t exist in our world. It leads upwards endlessly, without ever reaching a top. Similarly, its path…
Face Wipe
Swipe – and the face is gone. A single movement of the hand is enough for a face to disappear, partially or completely. The installation “Erase-A-Face” plays…
Falling tiles
Braking with Eddy Currents. Various metal plates are dropped between two rows of magnets. The magnets generate eddy currents in the plates that slow them…
Feeling current
How strong is the effect of electricity? Here you can feel the sensation of electric current. To do this, you place two fingers on two contacts and increase…
Feeling Eyes
Sometimes round, sometimes oval. With eyes closed and explored by touch, the bowl feels oval. Viewed through the lens and touched, it appears – depending on…
Feeling for Weight
Form influences expectation. Size-weight illusion: the upper of two stacked boxes appears heavier than both boxes combined. Estimating weight and lifting: in…
Ferrofluid-aquarium
The so-called ferrofluid floats in a transparent liquid. This is a black liquid that can be influenced with magnets and forms spiky shapes in the magnetic…
Find the Fish!
Fits, from head to fins. The fish, the wire frame next to the image, fits in only one spot into the pattern with the "water lilies." The pattern with many…
Floating Rings
Magical: Three rings floating in perfect balance. That they appear to balance like spinning coins is an illusion. The rings are firmly connected to one…
Fragrance Memory
In a number of identical looking smelling containers there are pairs of different scents, pleasant and unpleasant. The task is to find these pairs. In…
Fragrance Wheel of Fortune
Scent and emotion: what effect does each smell have? Spin the wheel and smell when it stops. As a "prize," pleasant or unpleasant scents. Delighted or…
Generator track
A magnet generates electric current. A track with a magnetic toy railway on it runs through a large coil. When the toy track is moved in the coil, a current…
Gentle Hands
Fine, yet coarse mesh. Perceiving structures: one hand strokes a coarse grid. The other hand strokes a fine mesh. Then both hands simultaneously stroke a grid…
Gothic Arch and Flying Buttress
With pillars and arches. Like in a cathedral: this is how forces act in a structure with a tall pointed arch and a system of buttresses. What significant…
High-voltage slide
Triboelectricity. A slide and its platform stand on several large insulators. Anyone who slides down is electrostatically charged. If you then touch the…
Hot - Cold
Can something be hot and cold at the same time? The copper coil is warm on one side and cold on the other. Our temperature receptors detect this immediately…
How big is a Million?
Incredibly large. 999,999 yellow balls in a glass cylinder – and one black one. Where is it? What is a million? Through the search, a concrete task turns an…
How many Smarties?
Estimate – and verify. The many colorful Smarties are tempting – and they spark curiosity. How many are there? Many, very many, maybe thousands. How many…
Human electrical circuit
Current flows through you. Several cubes with metal surfaces are placed near a larger cube. If you connect the surfaces of the cubes with your body, current…
Hyperbolic Slot
Straight rod passes through a curved slot. Impossible, that’s the first thought. But the experiment proves otherwise. The straight rod moves without contact…
I
The world in your head. A room free of distractions, without contrasts or contours: the entire field of vision is exposed to a single constant, homogeneous…
I am a function
Three steps forward, one step back. The point on the screen moves along. The curve displayed on the screen is the target. Goal: move closer, move away, and…
I You Us
Five faces – one world. A stimulating exploration of themes such as freedom, feelings of belonging, or emotions like shyness or embarrassment: who will you…
Impossible Nuts
A perfectly straight pencil that wiggles. When the brain resists what the eye sees: it seems impossible for the pencil to move through the two nuts in such a…
Inclined Chess
Big and bulky for some – small and slim for others. A completely messed-up chess set, right? Agreed? Almost. The chessboard is perfectly level. The pieces…
Ink Fractals
Fingers grow fingers. As the ink spreads between the two acrylic plates, beautiful fractal patterns form. Finger-like structures that resemble ink…
Inner magnetic structures
Magnetic Domains under the Microscope. With the help of a microscope, the magnetic structures ("domains") inside a magnetisable platelet are made…
Kneading with magnets
Attractively repulsive. In a bowl there are two strong horn magnets and a large quantity of small iron discs. The iron discs become magnetised near the…
Leonardo’s Bridge
Clever: How Leonardo da Vinci builds a lightweight bridge. No screws, no nails, no ropes; just a few planks. From these, he creates a sturdy bridge. An idea…
Lights ON
Seven lights, seven buttons. The goal: make all seven lights turn on – or none at all. Pressing a button affects three lights and causes a state change: from…
Look in the Clouds
Clouds drift by – shapes emerge. The phenomenon of pareidolia: when watching the drifting clouds on the large screen for a while, we see animals, objects, and…
Loose Stone Bridge
Brilliantly strong and simple. Loose stones, assembled in the correct order, form a bridge capable of bearing weight. Even in a small format, it can support…
Luminous sculptures
Three dimensional circuits. Two contacts are attached to each of three stations, which can be connected with the help of magnetic rods and iron balls. The…
Machine with Concrete / Machine set in Stone
The Eternity Machine. Twelve worm gear mechanisms for eternity! An impressive example of mathematics illustrated mechanically. With each successive gear, the…
Magnet in copper bar
«Floating in Copper» The two copper rods hang in space like a split log. Between them is a magnet that can be made to float with the help of a second magnet…
Magnetic balance
Floating through diamagnetism. Underneath a large ring magnet is a transparent box with a small magnetic cube and a base made of graphite. At exactly the…
Magnetic building blocks
Unconventional building blocks. There is a magnet in each of the different building blocks. Depending on the position of the poles, the building blocks can…
Magnetic diversity
«Visitor Magnet» There are many electromagnetic objects in this large box. Everyone can explore for themselves where the phenomena can be found and how they…
Magnetic repulsion
North pole against north pole. A slight change in the distance between two magnets has a major effect on the force between them. The closer they come, the…
Make two into one
A new look at familiar faces. Three of you are sitting at a table. One person is looking into two mirrors. With the right eye, they see the person sitting to…
Misty Messages
Two patterns, one image. From a distance, the surface on the plate looks like grey fog. But when we place a second plate exactly on top, an image is…
Möbius Cube Loop
Infinite puzzle. The Möbius strip, assembled from cubes. The building blocks are cubes and corner pieces. The faces of the cubes are painted on their…
Moebius Strip
Loop without end. Most things have two sides, but not everything. Among the exceptions is the Möbius strip. When we ride along it with a small train, we…
Moiré
It’s all a matter of perspective. Black point clouds: this impression is created by two perforated plates mounted one behind the other at a certain distance.…
Movement Blindness
Here just a moment ago. Now gone. Above a rotating pattern, objects are present – and then vanish. Our brain weights and interprets moving and stationary…
Mozart’s Dice Music
Compose like Mozart. Roll the dice 16 times, select 16 bars, and voilà – a composition: as simple as that, according to Mozart. Following his idea, composing…
Musical antenna
Play with the Field. A large antenna registers the changes in its own electric field when people enter it. The changes are made audible as sounds. In this…
Never-Ending Scale
When the scale descends infinitely… Listen closely, press a key, then the next – and compare. At first glance, identifying the highest note seems easy. Which…
Non-round Wheels
And yet they roll! With the right rolling surface, even a square rolls perfectly round. This applies to a pentagon as well as to any other regular…
Passing Shadows
“Passing Shadows” is an outdoor installation by the artist duo Drzach & Suchy. A specially shaped structure made of a biological material casts different…
Pedal generator
Generate electricity yourself. The pedal generator can make you sweat quite a bit just to boil a sip of water. How much (pedal) power do you think it takes…
Penrose Parquet
Aperiodic pattern. In the aperiodic Penrose tiling, subpatterns repeat irregularly, even though shapes like hexagons or stars appear throughout. Using only…
Pi
The first 20,000 decimal places. π, the mysterious number – displayed as a digit spiral on a poster. π (Pi) is a natural constant that represents the ratio…
Pins in a magnetic field
Reverse the polarity of the earth. Inside a transparent sphere is a very strong magnet. Iron pins can be held or placed outside the sphere. These align…
Plasma columns
Influence the clouds of mist. A red glowing plasma is generated in two glass columns by an electric field. If you touch the column, you change the electric…
Push Over
Now stay steady. Standing on one leg – nothing could be easier. But is it still true when the panel with vertical stripes moves back and forth? This throws…
Pythagoras’ Theorem - Easy to weigh up!
a² + b² = c² with stars and bunnies. The square of the hypotenuse and the squares of the legs can be weighed against each other, as they are made of identical…
Pythagoras’ Theorem - flows from this
a² + b² = c² The Pythagorean theorem describes a transformation of areas. In a right triangle, the sum of the squares of the two shorter sides equals the…
Quasi-Crystals
Golden rhombohedra. When correctly assembled, the various bodies (cubes stretched along their diagonals and cubes compressed along their diagonals) form a…
Reversed Perspective
Art gallery reveals contradictions. This three-dimensional spatial sculpture completely overturns our visual habits. It flips the space by presenting elements…
Rhombo Puzzle
Rhombo-dodecahedron from parallelepipeds. Twelve building blocks (each consisting of two connected parallelepipeds) can be assembled to form a…
Rising or Falling
Interpreting signals of position and balance. When the platform lowers and the column elongates: how does the brain interpret the messages from tactile cells…
Rocking Roller - the Oloid
Wobbles, but goes straight. The oloid has only one surface. It is the only known shape that fully unwinds as it rolls. This means that every point on its…
Rotating magnets
Hovering through rotation. One magnet is set into rapid rotation. If you now approach a second magnet to the rotating one, the second one starts to rotate as…
Rotating Tunnel
Hold on! Walking on solid ground, like on a swaying ship. Standing stable, walking upright on flat ground: nothing could be easier. Or is it? The rotating…
Sculptures in stroboscopic light
« BLOOM Revelation » and « BLOOM Accordance ». Sculptures come alive: single images, shown in rapid succession, are combined by our brain into a seamless…
Separated Fingers
Are these mine? The fingers under the mirror look strange. And they feel strange too; like objects or peculiar creatures. The brain trusts the eyes more than…
Sloping Room
And the ball rolls – uphill. Step right in! Are you standing steady? A normal room with normal furniture, and yet it creates a strange feeling. The reason is…
Smell Habituation
Even strong scents fade eventually. In a mixture of a strong and a weak scent, we only smell the strong one – the dominant scent. If we smell the strong scent…
Soft landing
Confidence in Eddy Currents. Here you can let yourself fall backwards and rely on the braking effect of eddy current. Two strong magnets are attached to a…
Solarmobile
Light becomes electric energy. The elements in this mobile each contain a solar cell and an electric motor. If you point the light of a lamp at one of the…
Soma Cube
7 pieces = 1 cube. Each of the seven components of this large cube is a polycube. This means each piece consists of several small cubes. Spatial imagination…
Sorting machine
Separation using Eddy Currents. The sorting machine uses magnets to sort different coins according to their conductivity. To do this, the magnets are moved…
Spot the Difference
Blind with eyes wide open. Click – and a detail in the image changes. Noticed it? Probably not. And if so, more by chance. Change blindness: when we look at…
Square Puzzle and the Square to Triangle-Conversion
Disassemble and reassemble – discrete geometry. Square puzzle: Nine square tiles of different sizes. Arranged correctly, they fit into an almost-square…
T-Puzzle
Frustratingly simple. Four pieces make up a puzzle. When placed correctly, they form the letter T. Child’s play. But: is this task really that easy?
Template Code
Untangling the letter jumble. Perfectly possible, with the right template. Using it in reverse, you can encrypt a 36-letter message, almost impossible for…
Tetrahedron Puzzle I
Three-sided pyramid, puzzle with two pieces. Spatial imagination is required: when correctly combined, these two equally sized bodies form a…
Tetrahedron Puzzle II
Three-sided pyramid, puzzle with four pieces. Spatial imagination is required: when correctly combined, these four equally sized bodies form a…
Tetrahedron Puzzle III
This puzzle game is mainly about spatial imagination. Four (2 equal) bodies made of spheres are to be assembled to form a tetrahedron.
Th shortest Way is not always the quickest
Marble race. Three tracks with the same height difference and the same horizontal distance, but different curves: the straight path is the shortest,…
The Circle’s the Limit!
A circle with many corners. Reflect green laser light to form a triangle, a quadrilateral, a pentagon, a … The more corners this polygon has, the more it…
The Eyes help you lift
This exhibit is about the conflict between the visual situation and what I expect from it, how the weights feel, and the feeling when I actually lift the…
The Odours of Things
Seeing, smelling, evaluating. Cheese? Pleasant. Smelly socks? Unpleasant! Correct – but not here. Visual context strongly influences how smells are perceived.
The separated Self
Right hand: the left hand. Left hand: the right hand. A glance from the right side into the mirror: Yes, that's the left hand. You move your left hand: but it…
The twist with the coil
Current using earth’s magnetic field. A coil is rotated in the earth's magnetic field and thereby generates current. The current generated depends on the…
Thread Models
Straight threads, curved surfaces. Rotatable cylindrical model: a cylinder becomes a hyperboloid. A surface generated by the rotation of a hyperbola. Movable…
Three Balls on a String
Motion patterns with momentum. Three balls on a string: what pendulum motions occur at low, medium, and high rotation speeds? Depending on the rotation…
Three Chairs
A different perspective: spatial perception. Looking through the peephole reveals three chairs. Only one is built as we would expect. A side view into the…
Three-dimensional Projection
3D – the cinema is made by the brain. From red and green shadows, plastic, three-dimensional objects emerge. Viewed through glasses with red and green…
Towers of Hanoi
Rearranging – how many moves does it take? Five disks stacked on a pole, arranged from largest to smallest. These five disks need to be moved to one of the…
Treadmill After Effect
This experiment consists of three parts, a pilot phase, an experimental phase and a test phase. In the pilot phase, people "jog" in place for 30 seconds with…
Tricky Curves
Reorienting in space. In us, vision and movement are closely interconnected: we see where things are and simultaneously sense where our body is in space.…
Turning Shadow
Playing with the Pulfrich effect: perceiving a two-dimensional image as three-dimensional. Through the Pulfrich glasses, the shadow of the cube gains depth.…
Upwards
“Upwards” is an exhibit that surprises our expectations of movement. A double cone moves along an inclined plane, seemingly upwards instead of downwards. A…
Water Parabola
Parabola in a natural phenomenon. As the rotational speed of this container increases, the water surface inside curves. The faster it rotates, the steeper the…
Waterfall Effect (Rotating Spirals)
Vision happens primarily in the brain. Spiral patterns seem to fold in and out as this disc rotates. If we focus on a stationary object, it suddenly appears…
Weird Wheels
Not round, but it rolls round. These discs aren’t round, but when they roll, their axis stays at the same height: solids of constant width. Disc-shaped bodies…
Welcome to Sector K… ?
This is how we read, this is how we understand written text. A letter is missing, the word is misspelled – and yet, we immediately understand what is…
What does she say?
The McGurk Effect: hearing with your eyes. Four faces appear on a screen, speaking simultaneously. Depending on which face we focus on, we hear a different…
Wide of the Mark
Throwing a ball through a ring: easy. Even with these glasses? The glasses shift the field of vision. The ball is now likely to miss its target. By…
Wobbly Bridge I Arch Bridge / Wobbly Bridge II Suspension Bridge
Suspension bridge – an arch bridge viewed from a different angle and subjected to a different load. Resembling a suspension bridge, the chain bridge reflects…
Wolf, Goat and Cabbage
Keep calm, ferryman! Task: transport cabbage, goat, and wolf to the other side of the river. Tricky, since only one other passenger fits on the ferry. The…
You and I
Feelings of closeness. There’s a head, a face, just 35 centimeters away. A distance that normally belongs to the personal intimate zone. What sensations does…
Your Birthday in Pi
Ten million decimal places. Somewhere in π lies your birthday or your license plate number. This computer station can find any six-digit combination. At…
«Poppier»
When walls wobble. Reversed perspective: it turns our visual habits upside down. The three-dimensional sculptural painting “Poppier” practically flips spaces…
Asseln unter der Lupe - inklusiv
Asseln sind bestimmt keine besonders beliebten Haustiere – umso mehr eignen sie sich aber als Einstieg in die Tierkunde. Was machen eigentlich Zoologen, deren…
Aus Rot und Grün wird ....) Farbmischung mit Kreiseln - inklusiv
bunte Papierscheiben tanzen. Plötzlich sehen wir Farben, die vorher gar nicht da waren. Wie kommt das? Und können wir mit nur drei Farben unsere…
Do not try this @home - Mikrowelle inklusiv
In unserer Zeit muss alles schnell gehen. Wie hilfreich ist da die Mikrowelle! Aber wie funktioniert dieses Gerät eigentlich? Und warum kann man darin keine…
Entdeckung im Alltäglichen - Experimente mit Kerzen - inklusiv
Die Phänomene, die sich bei einer brennenden Kerze beobachten lassen, führen zu vielen verschiedenen Themen in den Naturwissenschaften. Kerzen lassen uns…
Kalt, kälter, schockfrosten - inklusiv
Ein Glace gefällig? Wir verwenden nur natürliche Zutaten und frosten diese mit flüssigem Stickstoff (minus 196 °C!) in Nullkommanix zu einer fruchtigen…
Villa Kunterbung - Farbchemie inklusiv
Rot und gelb macht blau, widdewiddewitt und grau macht grün! Warum Rotkohl sowohl Blau als auch Rot sein kann, hat seinen Grund in der Chemie. Farben spielen…
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