Thousandapologies

Today, I found myself getting up too early for my recently acquired holiday rhythm (getting up at 11.00 going to sleep at around 2.00) to travel to the Mathematikum in Giessen. My aunt, a mathematic teacher, had gotten me enthousiastic about it and so at around 9.00 in the morning we left for a three hour ride accross the German autobahn. Much of the journey made me nostalgic off the trip the Namesake, Drachslaaa, and I made to Innsbruck two years ago, as Giessen is in the neighbourhood of Frankfurt a.M., which we passed then as well. Upon arrival, it became clear that this museum wasn’t so much about reading, walking, reading, the usual you expect, but more about doing; trying to solve all kinds of puzzles (most of trying to make one shape out of a couple of other shapes) and actually exploring all kinds of mathematics and also physics. I must say I really loved the way the museum was set up, and I think the playful way that all kinds of mathematical stuff was dealth with, for example Pythagoras’ law etc.,  even got the most demotivated students to enjoy the matter. Kept me wondering about whether this couldn’t be done during the normal lessons. The only minor disadvantage I found is that, because of this playfulness I think more complex mathematics were not dealth with. I would have loved to see more examples like the one that used a parabolic to calculate easy multiplications, a really nice example. But all in all, it’s definitely worth the visit! I must say after this visit and also by recently doing some research into some simulation mathematics for Tally, my interest for this field has been again enkindled, and I’m looking forward to do more with it again in a future job.