Mathematikum

On Wednesday my German class took a fieldtrip to the Mathematikum, a math museum in the next city over. It was entirely interactive and a lot of fun, so I decided to post some of the pictures and talk about what we played with.

Here is Lindsey (left) and Hannah (right) on the train to Gießen. Lindsey is from New Jersey and Hannah is from New Zealand.

Rachel (left), me (center), and our teacher Monika (right) walking through Gießen.

One thing we learned about was the Mobius strip, which is a two-dimensional object that exists in three-dimensional space. Simply put, it’s a band that only has one surface, even though it looks like it has two sides. If you then cut it down the center, it becomes one big strip that does have two sides, and if you cut it into thirds, it does this:

Mimi (left) and Lindsey (right) looking for a black bead that’s one in a million.

Here is a big contraption that balls rolled through and made disks spin and bells ring. I’m not really sure if it was supposed to demonstrate something, or if it was just something fun.

Lindsey was struggling to make a hexagon out of the pieces.

Me, stuck on this puzzle after successfully completing two other ones.

Monika doing puzzles with Lindsey and I.

Finally figured it out!

This is a real-life Klein bottle. There is no inside and no outside, but it can still hold liquid.

Lindsey and Mimi doing a puzzle.

Cool bubbles.

Giant bubbles!

Mirrors!

This puzzle has you match up the shadow with the triangles, but the objects are irregular triangles so it’s tricky!

We ended the day with building some shapes.

All in all I had a really fantastic time. It reminded me of being in Montessori school again and the puzzles were surprisingly stimulating. If you are ever in Germany near Frankfurt, I highly recommend taking the train up to Gießen and checking out the Mathematikum!

http://www.mathematikum.de/

Weird German thing of the Week

Something that was really interesting to me is that all bottles—both glass and plastic—can be turned in at grocery stores for money. Technically how it works is that a deposit for the bottle is added on to the price of the drink and then when you bring the bottle back, you’re getting your deposit back. It doesn’t have to be to the same store or anything, and the prices are still almost always cheaper than in America anyway. 

They also had a similar process at a club we went to. When you bought a drink it was one euro extra, and then when you brought your cup back you got your euro back. That seemed particularly strange to me, but I think the process with bottles is fantastic. It encourages people to recycle, and if they get left on the street, people will pick them up in order to get the money from them, so it keeps the streets really trash-free. They also keep them separated by color because they don’t melt down the glass again unless they break, (which saves energy) and they re-label and use them again until they do break (I assume). Sometimes you can see remnants of glue from different-sized labels, particularly on beer bottles.