![]() In this case, I wanted to introduce students to that intriguing pioneer of the modern horror tale, Edgar Allan Poe. Planning the ContentĪs with any escape room, the first step is to figure out what material you want students to take in as they play. You’ll see how to add some complexity without doing anything crazy. But last week we talked about how to make creative escape rooms without the fuss on Google slides, and this week I’m going to walk you through the process I used to brainstorm content, create clues, and choose locks for an escape room on Edgar Allan Poe. It’s easy to see the codes, locks, smoke and mirrors of escape rooms and think they’re not for you. Kwiat even got a grant from it.If you’ve been staying up with the blog this month, you know we’re demystifying escape rooms. Did you know your digital camera can capture infrared light that your eyes cannot see? I didn’t.Īnd there really was a federal agency called the Disruptive Technology Office. Now, escape room players have come up with 18 different ways of fishing out the key.Ī debriefing after you finish your time locked in the room yields some fascinating tidbits. Then someone figured out a third way, and someone else figured out a fourth way. Kwiat designed the solution, but was surprised when a participant figured out an alternative way of getting the key. One puzzle involves extracting a key to open a lock to get to another clue. The escape room has been a learning experience for Dr. Under the strain of the extra weight, the plastic ruptured, unleashing a sticky deluge. ![]() Kwiat overlooked another basic property of corn syrup - it’s denser than water. Your eyes do not perceive polarization, but a polarizing filter in the IMAX glasses turned the invisible colorfully visible. Because acrylic is not optically active, the rays that passed through the letters - and traveled through less of the syrup - had a different orientation. (Think of the planes doing barrel rolls in synchrony.)īlue light rotates about twice as much as red light. As the light passed through the syrup, the polarization rotated. Polarized light - where the oscillating electric fields of the photons are lined up in parallel, like airplanes flying in formation - was directed into the tank. But because the two materials possess roughly the same index of refraction, light passed from one through the other without bending, and the letters were almost invisible.īut corn syrup is also what scientists call “optically active,” because of the shape of its sugar molecules. The letters, made of acrylic, were also in there. The tank was not empty, but filled with 18 gallons of corn syrup. But put on a pair of 3-D IMAX glasses, and three-dimensional letters spelling LabEscape, fringed in psychedelic colors, suddenly appeared before you. Kwiat took advantage of the optical alchemy of acrylic and corn syrup.Īt first look, the tank was clear and seemingly empty. To avoid spoiling the puzzles for future lab escapees, consider instead a plastic tank that once hung in LabEscape’s welcome area. Kwiat came up with sleights-of-vision that seem like computer- generated special effects but instead manipulate phenomena of real materials. Kwiat has created a sequel scenario as well as a transportable prequel that he has taken to physics conferences. (The $10,000 grant from the American Physical Society arrived four months later.) Some 4,700 people have now passed through. “There’s a good reason you’re locked in a room, and there’s a good reason why there are puzzles, and there’s even a good reason why there are people giving you hints to those puzzles.” “For me, the best escape rooms are the ones with a good story line,” Dr. ![]() Then she disappeared, leaving behind a secret laboratory with mysteries to be solved. ![]() But she was worried that enemy agents were closing in to steal her discovery. He put together a story: The fictional Professor Alberta Schrödenberg has made a breakthrough in quantum computing while working for a government agency, the Disruptive Technology Office. A Shortcut in Space-Time : In an experiment that ticks most of the mystery boxes in modern physics, researchers simulated a pair of black holes to create “a baby wormhole” and sent a message through it.An Unexpected Discovery: A relatively simple, inexpensive experiment revealed a new form of ice that could exist elsewhere in the solar system and throughout the universe.scientists announced in December that they had crossed a long-awaited milestone in reproducing the power of the sun in a laboratory. Tantalizing New Possibilities : An advance in the search for superconducting materials that work in everyday conditions could one day transform most electrical devices.Advances in Understanding How Our World Works ![]()
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