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…
Adhesive Air
Coandă Effect: How shape, position, and surface influence airflow. The Coandă effect occurs when fluid or gas jets deviate from their original flow direction…
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…
Ball in a Bowl
Particle accelerator. Hula hoop meets spinning coins: balls orbit inside the sphere. Circular movements propel the two balls onto their orbits within the…
Shorter path = faster to the goal? A question that occupied the best mathematicians three hundred years ago. This competition compares two parallel tracks,…
Ball on water-beam
Drawn to the jet. Table tennis balls float on a water fountain: how is that possible? The ball doesn’t stay exactly in the center of the jet. It rotates…
Ball sorting machine
Playful tidying up. Yellow. Red. Blue. This machine sorts the small, medium, and large balls among Pierre Andrès' “Machines Singulières” in a playful manner.…
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…
Bernoulli’s Elephant
by Paul Spooner 2016, Cabaret Mechanical Theatre, England What is a pink elephant doing at Technorama? The Bernoulli Elephant is a work by the artist Paul…
Bouncing (Steel) Ball
Ping-ping, not ping-pong. When a ping-pong ball drops onto the table, its sound is unmistakable. A tapping noise that grows quicker and quicker. This happens…
Boyo
Reaching High. Pull the rope with the handle firmly downward – immediately, the flywheel pulls the rope and handle back up. It works like a yo-yo, but in…
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…
Captured Cloud
Swirling Fog. Step into the cloud. It’s pleasantly cool inside. Will you find your way out? In the two half-shells, nozzles spray fine water droplets. It's…
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…
Changeable Weather
How do you determine the average value of numerous individual measurements? Here, the average monthly rainfall can be determined experimentally.
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…
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…
David versus Goliath
Who is stronger? Push the plunger down. Which of you feels like Goliath and which feels like David? The air pressure is the same in both cylinders. Their…
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…
Distant receiver
Big Ear. If the listening horn is well aligned, birds can be heard chirping even from far away. The large dish collects and focuses sound waves, amplifying…
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…
Echo Pipe
Hello?! Shouting, calling, whistling, clapping – this tube answers. The returned sound is quite different from the original noise. How long does it take for…
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 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…
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 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…
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…
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…
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…
Get the wrong end of the stick?
Levers in Action. Can one person lift three others? On this seesaw, the lever works in your favor. Even if the others are much heavier, the seat plate « on…
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…
Higher and further
Water creates pressure. Water jets spray horizontally from the cylinder at different heights. The lower the nozzle, the higher the water pressure and 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…
Hot heap
Life generates Heat. The living organisms contained in a compost heap, such as bacteria and fungi, break down dead organic material and thereby gain energy…
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 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…
Infrared camera
Feel and See Heat Cold and warm: what we feel is transformed by the infrared camera into a colorful image. This makes temperatures – and temperature…
Jumping Water
Fascinating Water Arches. Is solid water flying through the air? Beautiful: sometimes, continuous arches form, almost like tent poles, but made of water.…
Klankkaatser
Hello world? Shaped like a light bulb, resembling a spacecraft capsule: welcome to the Klankkaatser! Is anyone there? The sound waves don’t drift into space;…
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…
Lissajous Sounds
What sounds good also looks good. Two small mirrors oscillate at the same frequency as their respective speakers. The frequency of one mirror (and its…
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…
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…
Magdeburg hemispheres
Air out! Hemispheres become inseparable. Through vacuum pressure, two hemispheres joined into one cannot be separated anymore. The experiment of the mayor of…
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 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…
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…
Momentum Machine
Pirouette – an elegant trick. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow, and then breathtakingly fast again – and all these variations in a fluid movement. How do…
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…
Musical Cloudburst
Dry Shower. What’s hitting the umbrella? It’s music! The intensity of the water jet determines the note. The umbrella acts as a loudspeaker. ❄️ Technorama…
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…
Obstinate Swing
Let it swing. One person sits still, while one or two others start swinging. Soon, the seated person begins to oscillate as well. These swings, connected by…
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…
Pin Screen
200,000 needles – a fakir’s delight. Two hundred thousand needles suspended in a perforated board. They beg to be stroked. No pain involved. These needle tips…
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…
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…
Quasi-Crystals
Golden rhombohedra. When correctly assembled, the various bodies (cubes stretched along their diagonals and cubes compressed along their diagonals) form a…
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…
Rockspinner
Strong Like Obelix! This "menhir" weighs five tons – yet you can move it effortlessly. The secret? The rod is perfectly mounted inside the stone, allowing it…
Rotating Chair with Bicycle Wheel Gyroscope
Turning left: pull the handlebars to the right. When initiating a left turn on the bicycle, we pull the handlebars slightly to the right. At a certain speed,…
Rotating Chair with electric double Gyroscope
Disk in motion. Chair with spin. The station drives the two disks of the double gyroscope. If both rotate in the same direction, the rotating chair…
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…
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…
Small Pin Screen
Impression and imprint. Press the pins to create a three-dimensional representation. Hand imprint or greeting message? Both. The image is quickly erased – and…
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…
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…
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…
Suspension Bridge
Vibration Patterns. Experience resonance frequency: Walking across the suspension bridge sets it into oscillation. Depending on your movement, these…
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?
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 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 finest difference
How fine is your dexterity? Very fine: experience how this is defined for you with this exhibit. You can feel when something sticks out by ten millimeters.…
The Odours of Things
Seeing, smelling, evaluating. Cheese? Pleasant. Smelly socks? Unpleasant! Correct – but not here. Visual context strongly influences how smells are perceived.
Tit for tat
Coriolis Effect. The water jets on this carousel are aimed toward the center. Once set in motion, they change direction. The Coriolis effect becomes visible…
Top chair
Lean back and spin around. As beautiful as a sculpture – and it sets everyone spinning, this chair. It rocks. It rotates. Or simply remains still. by Thomas…
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…
Travelling Chain
«Travelling Chain» A fleeting, playful touch of the moving bicycle chain – and it performs surprising twists or gentle, artistically elegant wave motions. by…
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…
Triad - metal, stone, wood
This is music! Comparing the sounds of different materials: this is how stone, metal, and wood resonate. The material, its length, volume, and the strength…
Tricky target well
Teamwork. Place a finger on the nozzle of the water jet, and a nearby nozzle’s jet will shoot even farther. Maybe. But maybe not. Which combination will…
Vomit, Grass and Candyfloss
Different scents, a surprising sum. Scents evoke specific feelings, moods, and memories in us. How they are perceived and judged varies individually and…
Water Bell
Like an elastic skin. Water flows upward against a flat surface. Diverted outward, it forms a bell shape. The shape of this bell depends on the pressure of…
Water film
Clinging Water. A daily phenomenon displayed in its most beautiful form: why doesn’t the water simply drip off the silver mushroom? Molecular interactions…
Water Music
Jam session "Splash Sounds". Experiment with water, improvise with surfaces and pipes, conduct an entire water orchestra: these compositions bear your…
Wave Machine
Waves like at the sea. Peter Markley spent many hours on the beach, watching for his father’s fishing boat. Naturally, he gazed at the sea. Time well spent:…
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…
Whisper Route
Amplifying Sound. Clearly understandable, even from forty meters away, what your conversation partner is saying. Receiving/Listening: One of the satellite…
Wind Machine
Breeze, storm, hurricane. From a gentle breeze to a raging storm: play with the wind. Reduce your surface area or expose as much of it as possible to the…
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…
Wooden machine A
Levers on all sides. It looks like a ship engine and provides plenty to do. Operate the levers with your hands, with your feet, on all four sides of this…
Wooden machine B
The Elk. Or is it a dinosaur? Everyone can decide according to their own preference. Elk or dinosaur, the game works like this: first, use the levers, then…
Wooden machine C
The swing rises. With each button press, the ball moves a little higher. On one side, the button lifts it, on the other, the swing drives the ball lift. At «…
Wooden machine D
How? Where? What? Foot pedal: Drives the ball lift. Gear lever: Influences the descent path. Crank with wheel: Keeps the ball in play. by Pierre Andrès: « On…
Wooden machine E
Marble run plus. After the zigzag with tac-and-tac-and-tac, the ball rolls down the ramp and lands on the cymbal. Bing! Machines to play with, artworks to…
Wooden machine F
Delicate sounds. It recalls a log of wood. But the sounds of this machine are more subtle, and the joyful rhythm is different from chopping wood. Operate the…
Wooden machine G
Tug the rope. The marble lift rises, floor by floor, with no display, no button. Here, you are the motor! Your pull on the rope sets everything in motion. At…
Wooden machine H
What's it about? Go up as fast as possible. Go down as slowly as possible. Is that the plan? If you set your own goal: that’s exactly the inventor’s…
Wooden machine I
The good-natured elephant. Rock the lever back and forth, and the ball climbs up, moves over the back, and rolls forward to the trunk. A strong sense of…
Wooden machine L
Wheel, plunger, slider. Turning the wheel launches the ball into play, almost like a pinball machine. The second launch option, using the plunger, makes it…
Wooden machine M
Left side / Right side. Which path will the ball take after starting? And where will it finally end up? Left or right, both sides offer exciting routes to…
Wooden machine N
Pinball. Unlike a classic pinball machine, the ball starts at the top. The position of the two levers determines its path downward and how long it stays in…
Wooden machine P
Steering the ball’s path. On this “tennis racket,” the ball stays in place even without special skill. But to navigate through the labyrinth, you need to…
Wooden machine Q
Around the tower. Start on the seesaw, then, clack, clack, clack, floor by floor, the ball moves down the tower to the exit. Machines for playing, artworks…
Wooden machine R
Unicum. Unique in this park of unique machines: the balls are green and black. They move without ever being touched. Pierre Andrès, creator of the “Machines…
Wooden machine S
Understanding time and space. At the heart of Pierre Andrès' reflections was the intention to make the dimensions of space and time tangible, even for young…
Wooden machine T
Seesaws in motion. Two seesaws influence each other. At the start, the ball sets the movement of the next ball in motion. Machines for play, artworks to…
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…
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…
Accessibile for people with cognitive disability
Accessible for people in wheelchair
Accessible for people with hearing disability
Audiodeskription
Gebärdensprache
Leichte Sprache
Little fine motor skills required
Symbole
