You need to row your fox, your chicken and a corn cob across the river! However, you can only bring one of them at a time. If the fox is left alone with the chicken, the chicken will be eaten. If the chicken is left alone with the corn cob, then the corn cob will be eaten. You can row back and forth across the river as often as you want. What do you do?

The riddle is just one of the tricky tasks you will encounter in the Puzzler exhibition, which is our new area for logical and mathematical challenges.

In contrast to many of Experimentarium’s lively science displays and activities, the Puzzler is a quiet corner where you will have the time to immerse yourself in fun challenges.

The Puzzler offers you both physical and spatial puzzles in varying degrees of difficulty. Common to them all is that they require patience and concentration.

As you solve the tasks, you will gradually develop and test your sense of logic and your understanding of spatial geometry.

Perhaps you will even discover that your interest in mathematics grows, since mathematics is the main theme of all the challenges in the exhibition.

Piet Hein’s Puzzle

One of these challenges is the Soma Solid Dissection Puzzle, where you have to assemble seven bricks to form a large cube.

The Soma Puzzle was invented by the Danish poet and mathematician Piet Hein. The story goes that he invented the puzzle while listening to a mathematics lecture.

Piet Hein discovered that if you combine up to four dice to form ‘concave’ shapes, you can only make seven different shapes. A concave piece consists of at least one inside corner.

If you add up the number of dice in the seven pieces, it totals 27 dice. The interesting aspect is that these seven pieces can be combined exactly to form a large 3 x 3 x 3 cube.

Tangram

Another example of the challenges in the Puzzler exhibition is the Tangram Jigsaw, where you have to assemble all seven pieces to create a square. The square cannot have any gaps or overlaps.

You can also try to make the yellow and the dark brown figure. Use all seven pieces for each figure.

The Puzzler is sponsored by