Picture of the Month: Shaping Waterways, Understanding Currents An interactive sandbox at the CampusXperience Festival

How does water flow through a landscape? What role do landforms play in heavy rainfall or flooding? What factors affect our waterways? Questions like these can be visualised with the help of the ‘Augmented Reality Sandbox’. Our picture of the month shows a section of this interactive exhibit, which the Leichtweiβ-Institute for Hydraulic Engineering and Water Resources at Technische Unversität Braunschweig uses to make science accessible to visitors and encourage them to get involved during the university’s CampusXperience Festival.

With the ‘Augmented Reality Sandbox,’ visitors to the CampusXperience Festival can create miniature landscapes – pile up mountains, hollow out valleys, and design river courses. Picture credits: Andreas Rudolp/TU Braunschweig

In the ‘sandbox’, visitors can shape miniature landscapes, building up mountains and hollowed-out valleys and designing river courses. Each change to the surface is recorded by a sensor and converted into an elevation model, which is then projected onto the sand. Thus, the real sand relief is supplemented by virtual elements: contour lines, colours, and above all, water. This virtual water flows through the designed landscape in real time, revealing the path taken by rainwater when it encounters different types of terrain. This playful simulation provides a better understanding of how water behaves on our planet. Such simulations are also important for flood protection and urban planning. They help identify where critical situations could arise during heavy rainfall.

From wave flumes to hands-on experiments

The AR sandbox at the Leichtweiβ-Institute Division of Hydrology and River Basin Management is one of the highlights of the Science Field at CampusXperience. Visitors can experience a wave flume, a research site in Costa Rica and a 3D aircraft model, as well as a Lego microscope. Scientists will also be offering exciting hands-on experiments, workshops, lectures and readings.

The CampusXperience Festival at TU Braunschweig will take place from 20 to 22 June under the motto ‘Explore. Celebrate. Play’ and will showcase the many facets of university life at TU Braunschweig. During the three-day festival, visitors can discover the university’s diversity through a variety of activities and events related to research, music and sports. Following the opening event, the Science Slam in the Audimax on 20 June, the journey of discovery through the university’s laboratories and facilities will continue on 21 June. From 3 p.m. to 11 p.m., everyone is invited to celebrate together at Summervibes on the North Campus. All six faculties will present themselves there with exhibits and hands-on science. The festival will conclude with the University Sports Festival on Sunday 22 June.

Further details about the event can be found at: www.tu-braunschweig.de/campusxperience