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…
Additive Color Mixing
Light colours are mixed quite differently from paint colours. We have known since childhood that many colours mixed together in a pot of paint produce a dark…
After Image
Not seeing nothing, but seeing nothing! A strong flash of light triggers a photochemical process on our retina. However, this process lasts longer than the…
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…
Ambiguous Figures
Clearly ambiguous. One object, two forms: “Necker cubes” belong to the category of ambiguously perceivable objects. Perceiving spatial dimensions and depth:…
Ants
Observe the bustling activity of ants as they move through a large enclosure performing various tasks. This is made of transparent material so that visitors…
Bakterien als Künstler - Damen
Standort: Treppenhaus 2 (hinteres Treppenhaus), 1. OG Ein schmales Aquarium ist mit Grundschlamm eines alten Teiches gefüllt. In den unterschiedlichen…
Bakterien als Künstler - Herren
Banana
If you place a blue filter exactly on the yellow banana, the banana appears green - logical, isn't it? A larger blue filter that also covers the white…
Benham's Disc
A rotating disc with a black and white pattern printed on it creates the impression of colours, even though there are no colours! Our colour receptors, the…
Blind Spot
If you stare with one eye at the apple on the tablet and slowly move it towards your face, at a certain distance the orange to the right of the apple seems to…
Blood Vessels of the Eye
In front of (and not behind) the retina of our eye runs a network of blood vessels. We just don't see them because the brain blocks out these constant…
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…
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…
Color Contrast
Colour squares on different coloured backgrounds are to be compared and the subjective impression checked with a stencil. Observation: our brain cannot…
Colour Reversal
A green tree against an orange background, a rotating disc with a recess, followed by a white surface - so what? If you let the disc rotate very quickly, so…
Coloured Shadows
Three lamps in the colours red, green and blue illuminate the white background, but there are six different coloured shadows: Miracles of colour addition. To…
Corpuscles of the Eye
Looking at the pulse! If you look into a blue light source, you can see pulsating dots, even a whole network of pathways. These are the red blood cells in 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…
Cube in a Mirror
Move this wire-skeleton cube towards and away from the mirror: when does its mirror image appear biggest?
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…
Depth Enhancer
This exhibit is not accessible during the winter months. When you look at your surroundings through the depth enhancer, they seem quite unfamiliar. The depth…
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…
Die gelbe Toilette - Herren
Standort: Treppenhaus 2 (hinteres Treppenhaus), 2. OG Beim gelben Licht, (monochromatisches Licht) sind keine Farben erkennbar, nach einer Minute schaltet kurz…
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…
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…
Edges communicate Information
Two grey panels each show a small white cross and a white area to the right of it. In one case the area is sharply delineated from the grey background, in the…
Emotion detector
Here, the skin resistance of a person is measured while being interviewed by another person at the same time. The skin resistance is influenced by the…
Escher’s endless Staircase
When the top step becomes the bottom step and vice versa. Be glad that you will never have to walk this infinite staircase. But still, the model is…
Eye Viewer
Our eye and a photo camera have many things in common. For example, our retina can adapt to changes in brightness to a certain extent (in the case of a camera,…
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…
Fantascope
Two printed discs with beam-like slits make fantastic "films" run when set in counter-rotation and viewed through one of the discs. Thanks to the inertia of…
Farbenwechsel - Damen
Standort: Treppenhaus 2 (hinteres Treppenhaus), 2. OG Jede WC-Kabine wird abwechselnd mit reinem Rot-, Gelb- und Blaulicht beleuchtet. An den Wänden befinden…
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…
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 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…
Frozen Hand
If a hand is moved quickly back and forth across a plate, it is always flashed at the same position by a stroboscopic flash. From the viewer's point of view,…
Full body involvement
Perceive quickly and react immediately with coordinated, skillful movements. Developed as a piece of sports equipment, “Full Body Involvement” promotes…
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…
Ghost Images
by Bill Bell Under a steady gaze, a viewer will see only a slight flickering light in a dozen columns of tiny bright LED bulbs. However when the viewer tries…
Goal-oriented grass
Plants, such as grasses, have cells that perceive gravity. This enables them to recognize where above and below is, and they can grow vertically and stably. In…
Half Shadow
We see colours that are not there - how can that be? A hand is illuminated by a white and a red lamp. In the shadow area that is only illuminated by the white…
Hermann Grid and Scintillating Grid with Variants
From a certain distance with a steady gaze, it seems to "flicker" on the images, to scintillate. Hermann grid: If you look at the grid from a distance of about…
Hollow Head
Only has eyes for you. One step to the left, three to the right, stretch upward a little, bend down: there’s no escape. Those eyes follow you…
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
The living organisms contained in a compost heap, such as bacteria and fungi, break down dead organic material and thereby gain energy for their life…
Human electrical circuit
Several cubes with metal surfaces are placed near a larger cube. If you connect the surfaces of the cubes with your body, current flows through the body and…
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…
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…
In & Out - Damen
Standort: beim Durchgang zum Restaurant Im WC sind die Wände bemalt mit den Farbtönen von unterschiedlichen Lebensmitteln (IN) und den Farben der…
In & Out - Herren
Standort: Beim Durchgang zum Restaurant Im WC sind die Wände bemalt mit den Farbtönen von unterschiedlichen Lebensmitteln (IN) und den Farben der…
In urina musica - Herren
Standort: Treppenhaus 2 (hinteres Treppenhaus), EG Im Pissoir befindet sich eine elektronische Einrichtung. Beim Wasserlösen löst der Urinstrahl je nach…
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…
Inner magnetic structures
With the help of a microscope, the magnetic structures ("domains") inside a magnetisable platelet are made visible. The result is a pattern of light and dark…
Klankkaatser
by Hans von Koolwijk The "Klankkaatser", which is about 10 metres high, has the shape of an ellipse in longitudinal section. Such an ellipse has two focal…
Light Deformation
by Piero Fogliati An illuminated white form curves and multiplies in the air. The shadow of this form is a matching silhouette. A button allows you to slow…
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…
Love is in the air
by Dr. Martin Oeggerli When magnified, inconspicuous pollen reveals a fascinating variety of structures with an almost artistic aesthetic.
Magic Wand
Actually light is invisible. Well, at least we can't see it if it doesn't hit our eyes directly. Therefore a slide projection wouldn't be that intresting…
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…
Mal kleiner, mal grösser - Herren
Standort: Treppenhaus 1 (nahe Eingang), 1. OG Wenn man 20 Sekunden auf das Zentrum der Spirale schaut und danach die eigene Handfläche beobachtet, zieht sie…
Messbare Erleichterung - Damen
Standort: Treppenhaus 1 (nahe Eingang), EG In der Schüsselbrille ist eine Waage integriert, die das Gewicht misst vor und nach dem "Geschäft".
Messbare Erleichterung - Herren
Microscope Model
This simple microscope essentially consists of an object lens that magnifies the object about 6 times and an eye magnifier that magnifies the image of the…
Mimose
The leaves of the mimosa fold up as soon as you touch them. With this survival strategy the mimosa protects itself from predators, because the folded leaves…
Model Eyeball
Here we can see why we can see objects sharply both far and near and what "short-sightedness" and "long-sightedness" are all about.
Moving Gray Areas
The grey figures have thin black and white borders. The brightness of the background can be changed with a slider and the figures appear to move. The…
Moving Stripes
A camera cannot capture fast movements sharply if the exposure time is too long. This effect can also be seen in our eyes: If one wants to see a fast movement,…
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…
Pass and become
Skin beetles and their larvae feed on dead animals. They ensure that carcasses are rapidly decomposed and nutrients are recycled. The entire recycling process…
Pseudoscope
What if we did not look at the world with an eye distance of 6cm on average, but with an eye distance of 36cm? And what if we simultaneously fed the…
Pulfrich Phenomena
Looking through the optics at the pendulum, it appears to swing in an elliptical path that changes direction when the grey filter is moved in front of the…
Pulfrich Phenomenon
A simple trick with an amazing effect! If you hold a dark filter in front of ONE eye and look at a swinging object, it suddenly appears to move in a circular…
Rainbow Smileys
by Paul Friedlander Nothing special at first glance: A whole tree of different rotating black/white patterns are illuminated by a seemingly white lamp. But the…
Reversed Perspective
Art gallery reveals contradictions. This three-dimensional spatial sculpture completely overturns our visual habits. It flips the space by presenting elements…
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…
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…
Scintillating Screen & Hermann Grid
In this fascinating combination of the scintillating grid and the classic Hermann grid, amazing phenomena appear in the new pattern in addition to the…
Sculptures in stroboscopic light
by John Edmark "BLOOM Revelation and BLOOM Accordance On this exhibit you can change the frequency of the light - what's the effect?
Sliding Gray Step
Light and dark is not an absolute quantity in our perception, which is well illustrated by this simple example: A pane of glass with grey stripes can be moved…
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…
Slow Blue
A red, a green and a blue light spot can be moved on a yellow surface whose brightness can be changed. The blue spot always seems to "lag behind".
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…
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…
Squaring the Circle
Everything always has two sides. From one side, it looks like a square; from the other, a circle. It’s all a matter of viewpoint and perspective. The…
Squirming Palm
This experiment works very similarly to the waterfall effect at the same table. If you stare at a rotating dot pattern for a while and then at the palm of your…
Street Lamps
All cats are grey at night! A colourful card (under normal light) loses all its colours under the orange monochromatic sodium vapour light. Objects can only…
Strom spüren
Here you can feel the sensation of electric current. To do this, you place two fingers on two contacts and increase the voltage with a button for as long as…
Swimming with the current
Single-cell organisms swim around in a chamber under a microscope. At the push of a button, the chamber can be put under voltage. The single-celled organisms…
Teeming world in water
A sample from the stream in Technorama Park contains different organisms. Even with the naked eye you can see it teeming in the water bowl. Looking through the…
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.
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…
Thermal image
The "temperature-sensitive" mirror image - A thermal imaging camera registers its heat radiation and converts this information into an image: cold areas are…
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…
Touch the Spring!
Through an opening you can see a feather in a large box. If you want to touch this feather, however, you reach into the void. - The feather is reflected on a…
Touching the Knife (or not)
Ouch! A Swiss army knife seems to float freely in space. But you can't cut yourself on it, because you are reaching into the void. A concave mirror creates a…
Trapezoidal Window
A window drawn in perspective, which thus takes on a trapezoidal shape, rotates around its own axis on a nylon thread. If you look at the rotating window from…
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.…
Unsicherer Boden - Damen
Standort: Treppenhaus 1 (nahe Eingang), 1. OG Der ganze Boden ist mit einer Folie belegt, auf der Dellen und Berge gezeichnet sind. Das ergibt die Illusion…
Unsicherer Boden - Herren
Waterfall Effect (Rotating Spirals)
When this disc is rotated, the spiral patterns seem to turn both in and out. An amazing effect occurs when, after watching these illusory movements for some…
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…
Wheel of Life
Does our brain function like a film camera? Here, similar to a flipbook, an endless film is running, only the main actors are just a few points of light.…
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…
Wire Mesh Sculpture
by Michael Rudnick A very ordinary fluorescent tube has remained without what makes it so: the coating with luminescent material. Thus, through the clear…
«Poppier»
When walls wobble. Reversed perspective: it turns our visual habits upside down. The three-dimensional sculptural painting “Poppier” practically flips spaces…
Afterimage
A flash of light prints a lingering image in your eye. After looking at something bright, such as a lamp or a camera flash, you may continue to see an image of…
Agar Cell Diffusion
Use cubes of agar to investigate how size impacts diffusion. All biological cells require the transport of materials across the plasma membrane into and out of…
Ambiguous Cube
Strange things can happen when your brain gets confused. Some objects or figures are “ambiguous,” providing visual input that your brain can interpret in more…
Bacteriopolis
Make a home for a colorful community of microorganisms. This endlessly fascinating living artwork reveals the colorful microorganisms living in the mud and…
Bean-Counter Evolution
Hunt for prey and discover the meaning of evolutionary “fitness” in this physically active group game. In this simulation game, teams of predators equipped…
To see or not to see. The eye’s retina receives and reacts to incoming light and sends signals to the brain, allowing you to see. One part of the retina,…
Cold Metal
"Cold" metal and "warm" wood may be the same temperature. Your hand isn't always a good thermometer. When you touch a variety of materials, some will seem…
A colored object may look different against different-colored backgrounds. In this investigation, you'll discover how colors seem to change when you place them…
Disappearing Act
If you want to stay hidden, you’d better stay still. Some animals blend in with their surroundings so well that they’re nearly impossible to see. Only when…
Groovy Sounds
Build a paper-pencil-pin phonograph. In this classic activity, make a record player out of simple materials and listen to your favorite vinyl LP—no outlet…
Head Harp
Learn a little string theory. Wrap a string around your head and pluck it to play music.
Hole In Your Hand
What happened to your whole hand? You have two eyes, yet you see only one image of your environment. If your eyes receive conflicting information, what does…
Life Size
Explore the size and scale of microscopic biology. Not only is it hard to conceptualize things that are too small to see, it’s often surprising to discover the…
Moire Patterns
Imperfect alignment can lead to interesting patterns. When you look through one chain-link fence at another, you sometimes see a pattern of light and dark…
Seed Germinator
Watch the life of a plant embryo unfold. What goes on underground when seeds are sprouting? Make yourself a window into the process of plant development.
Sound Bite
Tune in to tunes with your teeth. When you listen to a radio or music player, you normally hear the sound coming from the speaker or headphones. But sound…
Tiny Hot Pile
Microbial decomposers heat things up. No yard? No problem. Make a mini indoor compost pile, and look for evidence of microbial metabolism.
Your Sense of Taste
Discover the real taste of candy. Think of some of your favorite tastes: savory Thanksgiving turkey, buttery mashed potatoes, tangy cranberry sauce, and warmly…
Aquatic animals - organisms in the stream and pond
When talking about animals in streams and ponds, children usually think of fish and frogs. The fact that there are other animals in these habitats that are…
CakeLab – function of baking ingredients
“Pat-a-cake pat-a-cake, baker’s man. Bake me a cake as fast as you can…” This popular nursery rhyme might be one way to bake a cake. But there are also other…
Chocolate atelier – The secret of Swiss Chocolate
Cocoa beans were already consumed at the time of the Aztecs and the Mayas, and chocolate has remained a bestseller for centuries. And it is equally clear that…
Cold, colder, shock freezing – ice cream in three minutes
Need an ice cream? We only use natural ingredients and freeze them with liquid nitrogen (minus 196 °C!) in no time to a fruity delicacy. Who can say no to a…
CSI Technorama – forensics
Regardless of whether it is a burglary, an accident or a felony, crime scene investigations always begin with securing the evidence. Are there fingerprints?…
Don't be so superficial! – Understand structures
How do plant leaves behave towards water? What does that have to do with surfaces and structures? And what can we learn about ourselves and our everyday life…
Genetic fingerprint - CSI
If the genetic makeup is roughly 99% the same among all humans, how is it possible to use DNA as a basis for convicting criminals beyond doubt? Is there a…
In murky waters - bioindication
How do we actually know how healthy a body of water is? Researchers use biological diversity as a criterion for water quality, among other things. Based on the…
Individual school projects at the REM
Matura work or class projects Whether pollen for checking honey quality or as templates for design objects, detailed illustrations of insects and plant…
Listen up! - Directional listening
The cat lies on the couch, eyes closed. Only the ears move slightly and turn in the direction from which they perceive a sound. Why can some creatures move…
Making it big – microscopy
Astronomers use the telescope to study the vast universe, and biologists use the microscope to examine microorganisms. But under the microscope we can also see…
Pleased to meet me – DNA
Have you ever wondered what it is that makes you, you, with those ears and that eye colour? Have you ever looked at your DNA? What exactly is it and where do…
Pumps and pipelines – water transport in trees
Just like other plants, trees also need water to survive. But how do trees “drink”? How do they absorb water? And how do they transport it from their roots to…
Radioactivity in everyday life – natural radiation
Radioactivity is not only in nuclear power plants, but also in common foods like mushrooms and dietary salt, in normal fertilizer for roses and, naturally,…
Sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami – PCR
Do we all really taste the same thing when we bite into a hot dog? And if not, what role do our genes play? PCR stands for polymerase chain reaction. This is a…
The beauty in the beast – scientific methods
It is safe to say that isopoda (woodlice) are not the most popular pets – but they are all the more useful for zoology. What do zoologists actually do when…
What do you see? – Function of the eye
We make eyes at someone, but keep an eye on others. We can turn a blind eye and sometimes get away with just a black eye. But the myriad of idiomatic…
Where am I? – Bioelectric orientation
Migratory birds find their way south by means of magnetoreception, bats create an “aural picture” of their surroundings by means of echolocation and certain…
Acoustics
Aggregate states
Algorithms
Animals, plants, habitats
Atomic and quantum physics
Atomic structure
Automats
Buoyancy
Chaos
Characteristics of life
Chemical Reactions
Chemistry
Colors
Computer science
Cryptology
Currents
Data and information
Design elements
Earth sciences
Electricity
Electricity and energy
Electricity and magnetism
Elektromagnetismus
Encryption
