Waves - Dive in!

Waves move the world

The new special exhibition by focusTerra shows why waves move the world. Waves can be discovered playfully using all senses via large-format illustrations and numerous experiments. Vivid examples from nature and everyday life provide easy access to our technology-based world full of waves. You can immerse yourself in this world at focusTerra until 5 March 2023. Start with a external page flight through the exhibition.

Waves are everywhere

They paint rainbows in the sky, carry your favourite song to your ears, and keep you warm on cold days: Waves! They are everywhere and a fundamental part of our lives – in fact, of the whole world. But not all of them are as easy to spot as a wave in the water. We perceive most waves only indirectly: sound waves when we speak and hear, light waves when we see, and X-rays when a doctor images the interior of our body.

Waves tell stories

Every wave has a story to tell. When we talk, sound waves convey our conversation. Light waves reveal an object’s colour and X-rays show us if we have broken a bone. Likewise, earthquake waves inform us about the Earth’s structure, and gravitational waves tell us about black holes that collided billions of years ago.

Waves in society

The concept of waves is also used to describe events in human society, such as fashion trends, migration patterns and the spread of diseases like COVID-19. And who is not familiar with the wave that travels through a crowd of fans in a stadium?

Landscapes full of waves

In the colourful landscape illustrations in the exhibition, visitors discover what properties waves have, how they differ and how we use them in our lives - naturally and technologically. It may come as a surprise that measuring the thickness of a glacier and the ultrasound examination of an unborn baby have more in common than is apparent at first glance. And the way we use our ears to determine where a sound is coming from works in much the same way as determining a location using GPS.

Experiments

Explorers old and young can experiment with waves themselves at many hands-on exhibits: They can hear like a dolphin, measure the radiation of their mobile phone or make Lego football players fall using waves. A miniature version of the Aquaretum in Lake Zurich shows how beautiful earthquake waves look in art. The fountain in the exhibition is linked to earthquakes as well as to the Mars quakes of the NASA InSight mission, which control its movement.

Supporting programme

The exhibition is rounded off by an exciting supporting programme with events as well as guided tours and workshops for groups and school classes. Custom-made educational materials in German are available for schools free of charge. Visits to the exhibition are free of charge. Public guided tours take place on Sundays. The book with the illustrations is available in German or English at the exhibition or can be ordered by email. For the first time, an exhibition by focusTerra can also be discovered online at the same time.