News

Exploratis: a new experimental station at the Science Center

  • Faculté des Sciences, des Technologies et de Médecine (FSTM)
    28 octobre 2021
  • Catégorie
    Recherche
  • Thème
    Mathématiques

The Luxembourg Science Center in Differdange now boasts a new experimental station called Exploratis. Faced with intriguing puzzles, visitors can either try them by themselves, race against each other, or collaborate to find solutions. Little do they know, they are exploring an uncharted world of mathematics. 

The Exploratis Station was conceived by Hugo Parlier (University of Luxembourg) and Paul Turner (University of Geneva) and created with collaborators Mario Gutierrez and Reyna Juarez. It was inaugurated October 23 at the Science Center, during the “Comme par hasART” event. Julien Meyer, a science mediator at the Science Center, is in charge of the station and was a driving force behind making this project come to life: “Since the inauguration, Exploratis has been busy non-stop. It is a real crowd pleaser, and this is really nice because mathematics isn’t often in the lime light.”

The multiple puzzles range from elementary to extremely challenging. In fact, Hugo Parlier says “It’s great to see people of all ages and backgrounds play these games. I’m also really curious to see which puzzles get solved the most. In fact, as far as I know, no-one has ever solved the last two puzzles… including us!” 

So now there is another good reason to visit the Science Center, and be the first. 

The Exploratis Station would not have been possible without the support of the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR via the PSP Classic grant entitled “Unpuzzling Mathematics”.  Thank you also to TomBooks (publisher of the interactive book Mathema by Hugo Parlier and Paul Turner).