Guided Tours for families during advent

Besides the regular public tours of the Arithmeum’s collection at 11 am and of the art exhibition at 3 pm, there will be special thematic guided tours for families on all four Sundays during advent at 11.30 am. These tours will take about one hour and are meant to give families with children [from the age of nine] the opportunity to discover the exciting world of mathematics in a simple way.

Starting with the Caesar’s code, we will find out how cryptographic machines work. We shall encode and decode a secret message with the legendary ENIGMA machine.

Children and their parents will become familiar with the different versions of the abacus, which has already been used by the Romans and is still used today in China, Japan and Russia. Doing a reckoning competition, we will see if it is really possible to be faster than the electronic calculator.

Why does the computer calculate by using only „0“ and „1“? Children and their parents will look into the past and find out, why the idea of calculating with the binary system has already been invented many centuries ago.

Children and their parents get to know the modes of operation of an early computer. Together, we will calculate with the Zuse computer „Z 25“ from 1968. With this machine, each step of the binary calculation is visible and can thus be followed.

Dies Academicus - Guided tours and free entrance

The Arithmeum is participating in this semester’s Dies Academicus by presenting the following guided tours and programs.

1 p.m. Reckoning today - With Zeros and Ones

3 p.m. Guided tour of the Arithmeum’s art collection

4 p.m. „From Babbage to Zuse 25“ – the early computers

5 p.m. Demonstration of the Zuse „Z 25„ from 1968