Young and old

Flexible story

Age and technical knowledge

• The didactical story can be dynamically guided by the audience or can be agreed upon in advance. We can go broad or add more depth to the story.
• In practice, the following works fine: the audience is given a few minutes to look at the objects on the tables and chooses the themes on the spot. Based on the interaction with the audience, more or less detail can be provided.

Interdisciplinary

• The interdisciplinary approach ensures that there are links with history, mechanics, Latin, mathematics, chemistry, computer science, geography, physics, ... In ancient times, the strict dividing lines between many disciplines did not exist yet.

Children

The themes appealing to a young audience are:

• the materials: both hearing (explaining and asking questions), seeing (the objects are shown) and feeling (they can hold and pass on the objects)
• the explanation about the minerals: the Platonic models are discussed in relation to the crystals, they can hold the minerals and crystals (around 200 minerals and crystals can be available)
• killing from a distance: arrowheads, slings & slingstones, and chemical warfare

Adults

Popular storylines for adults or higher grades are:

• the Antikythera mechanism (programming with gears)
  
• the dodecahedron
• the torsion catapult

Mix

• At mass events such as Nerdland Festival I try to dive into the world of interest of the varied audience as quickly as possible, and when I have found a point of interest, use this as the starting point of the didactical story.
• The most challenging are the mass events abroad where I offer all themes, with a varied audience and express myself in Dutch, English, French and German.
• At an open day, both interested parents and potential future students can be addressed.

Interactivity

Brain exercises

• Oh no, you don't get everything for free. You will have to think and analyse: Archimedes' puzzle, how do you get out of the labyrinth, ...
• As a preparatory assignment, you can walk around a modern department store and pay close attention to ...

Remembering

• Sorry, search engines didn't exist yet and libraries were scarce. You should therefore rely on your memory, just like the ancients who were trained in memorizing. Cicero mentions in one of his manuscripts how he memorized a long speech.

Activities

• That is certainly possible (puzzles, cracking locks, lever action, ...).