Scientifica 2023
The Scientifica took place from 2 to 3 September on the theme: "What holds the world together?". The Department's stand introduced visitors to the topic of minimal surfaces.
At this year's Scientifica, the Department invited the public to experiment with soap bubbles and learn more about the topic of minimal surfaces. At the stand, visitors learned that soap skins do not always have to be round and what other shapes they can take.
Inside the giant soap skin
When the visitors pulled on the rope, they were enclosed in a huge soap skin and could watch from the inside how it first had the shape of a tube, then it narrowed until it touched the person and burst. The shape that the skin took is called a external pagecatenoid and describes the surface that forms between two rings that are pulled apart.
Soap bubbles with corners and edges
In this experiment, visitors could dip the wire model of a cube, a tetrahedron or a prism into the soapy water and observe what surprising shapes the soap skins formed. In this experiment, too, the soap films form in such a way that their surface area is minimal.
