Alice in Quantum Land
An audio play from the school laboratory PhotonLab
uantum physics for 6-12 year olds - is that possible? Of course it is! With the audio play "Alice in Quantum Land", the PhotonLab school laboratory at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ) in Garching near Munich now also offers elementary school students and those ages upwards an entertaining as well as educational mediation offer to playfully familiarize themselves with phenomena of quantum physics. The first episode of the audio play, entitled "A Cat Named Schrödinger," will be available for listening on MPQ's youtube channel and the institute's own website www.photonworld.de starting June 26, 2022. It will subsequently be published on popular streaming portals. The live premiere as a reading with background music will also take place on Sunday, June 26, 2022 at 10:30 a.m., at the "forscha" youth fair in Munich (Verkehrszentrum des Deutschen Museums, Theresienhöhe / Alte Messe).
The school laboratory PhotonLab has produced an audio play that presents basic phenomena of quantum physics in a vivid and child-friendly way and is intended to arouse children's curiosity in the process. Based on the famous story "Alice in Wonderland" by Lewis Carroll, the heroine Alice experiences equally wondrous events in the quantum world, which, however, are not imagined or dreamed of, but are actually part of our reality in the very smallest. Comparable to a jigsaw puzzle, the quantum world contains the individual parts and basic building blocks of our earth, which are so small that you can't even see them and of which an almost infinite number fit in your own pocket.
In the pilot episode of the multi-part audio play series, Alice and her rabbit miraculously end up in Quantum Land, where the laws of nature are completely different from what they are used to. On her search for her runaway rabbit, Alice experiences a lot of adventures in the first episode entitled "A Cat Named Schrödinger". First, after a few attempts, she suddenly manages to reappear on the other side of a wall and "tunneled" through it. Later, she frees a mysterious talking cat, which answers to the name Schrödinger, from a box. The cat claims that it was dead and alive at the same time in this place. All sorts of things! Schrödinger becomes Alice's companion and friend on her journey through the quantum world, where the two of them experience a number of physical adventures in search of Rabbit.
Here you can find an audio sample in advance (in German language):
The live premiere will take place as a reading on June 26, 2022 at 10:30 h at the forscha, Munich, at the Verkehrszentrum des Deutschen Museums. The reading by Dr. Veit Ziegelmaier (co-author and executive producer) and Sofie Silbermann will be musically accompanied by Margarita Holzbauer (cello). Admission is free.
From June 26, 2022, the audio play will be available on www.photonworld.de and soon on youtube and in your podcast app.
Cooperation partners: student lab PhotonLab at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU), Munich-Center for Quantum Science and Technology (MCQST), Munich Quantum Valley (MQV) and the Deutsches Museum München.
Further information:
Dr. Silke Stähler-Schöpf
School Lab PhotonLab
Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics
Hans-Kopfermann-Str. 1
85748 Garching
Tel: 089/32905-197
staehler-schoepf@mpq.mpg.de
Welcome to Photonworld – a platform for knowledge, interesting facts and science on the topic of light. Photonworld aims to provide a basic understanding of the physics of light and its countless phenomena. From medicine, to art and physics: all topics are covered.
Photonworld originated as an initiative of the excellence cluster the Munich-Centre for Advanced Photonics (MAP) and the Laboratory for Attosecond Physics (LAP) at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ).
The initiator of the project is Prof. Dr. Ferenc Krausz, Chair of Experimental Physics at the LMU and Director of the MPQ.
Photonworld’s Student Zone reports directly out of the PhotonLab, which is supported by the Munich Center for Quantum Science and Technology (MCQST) and the DFG Research Unit FOR 2783. At the PhotonLab, schoolteachers and students can find up-to-date information about experiments and goings-on at the lab, and plan their own visit to the laboratory.
