On the trail of a fictitious professor: new game about physics and the Bahrenfeld campus

11 August 2021

Photo: CUI, Eileen Schwanold

Photo of the fictitious scientist from the game.

The new escape game of the school laboratory "Light & Schools" has passed its baptism of fire: For the first time, schoolgirls followed in the footsteps of the fictitious professor Lisa Kareem and explored both the Bahrenfeld campus and phenomena in physics - and experienced the research topics of the Cluster of Excellence "CUI: Advanced Imaging of Matter".

Escape games are puzzle games in which teams work together to solve puzzles and advance one step in the game with each correct answer. They work in both the real and the digital world. Bastian Besner, Sarah Albrecht and Felix Teutloff from the school lab " Light & Schools" realized an escape game around the Bahrenfeld campus together with Eileen Schwanold. Schwanold is a diversity manager in the Cluster of Excellence and focuses on topics such as gender equality, cultural diversity and social origin. The new digital offering, which was developed with a great deal of effort and commitment, can be played without any great prior knowledge and with only a few tools.  

A role model for girls

The game currently consists of two challenges. In the first part, participants must solve a puzzle to be invited to an interview with the fictitious scientist. "Through the central figure of 'Professor Lisa Kareem,' we want to create a living role model for young girls. Such visible role models can provide encouragement to pursue interests typically attributed to boys and show that girls naturally have what it takes to pursue careers in the sciences," says Schwanold. Challenge two involves exploring the campus, combined with physics puzzles and complementary experiments.

Also suitable for boys and various age groups

"The escape game is primarily designed for female students in grades eight through ten, but is also suitable for other ages and, of course, boys," explains Besner, who coordinates the school lab along with Dr. Jonas Siegl. The experiments and puzzles can be worked on at home and in class. "It's important to us to spark interest in the natural sciences and show how exciting the career field is and how much fun physics can be."

In the first run, the concept obviously worked: The girls experimented and discussed vividly, they drew connections to physics lessons and to their everyday world, and so everything seemed "actually quite logical" and obviously highly interesting to them: How could one work in the Cluster of Excellence, they asked the scientific coordinator of the Cluster of Excellence, Dr. Hans Behringer, who presented the research project following the escape game.

Click here for the escape game