Advent calendar 2025—day 24: The Light
From Adolf Luther’s acrylic-glass lenses in Krefeld to microscopes and telescopes, lenses make light—and worlds from particles to galaxies visible. As this Advent calendar comes to a close, our gaze turns to the Star of Bethlehem.
Advent calendar 2025—day 23: Kinetic lenses
From Zeiss’ 1846 workshop to kinetic light art, Jena’s lens culture links physics and aesthetics. Which German kinetic artist, famed for glass lenses and mirrors, died in 1990?
Adventskalender—Tag 23: Kinetische Linsen
Von Zeiss’ Werkstatt (1846) bis zur kinetischen Kunst: Jena zeigt, wie Linsen Physik und Ästhetik verbinden. Welcher deutsche Kinetik-Künstler mit Glaslinsen und Spiegeln starb 1990?
Advent calendar 2025—day 22: Quantum art
From Planck to phones—and Munich’s “Seeing the Unseen” links quantum physics & art. Our riddle: which famous quantum theorist did Friedrich Hund team up with in Leipzig?
Advent calendar 2025—day 21: Goblin Ore
From CoAl₂O₄ to “Kobold” (“Goblin”) mine spirits: why cobalt ore fooled silver miners in the Ore Mountains—and when did Erzgebirge/Krušnohoří become UNESCO World Heritage?
Advent calendar 2025—day 20: Cobalt blue & IKB
From Yves Klein’s famous International Klein Blue process to Sabine Becker’s acrylic cobalt blue—discover why this intense hue glows and what mining secret hides in the name “cobalt blue”.
Advent calendar 2025—day 19: Installations
Water is densest at 3.98°C (so lakes freeze from the top), and today’s riddle follows artist-physicist Peter Vogel—what was his first job as a graduate physicist?
Adventskalender 2025—Tag 19: Installationen
Wasser ist bei 3,98°C am dichtesten (darum frieren Seen von oben), und heute rätseln wir über den Künstler-Physiker Peter Vogel—was war sein erster Job als Diplomphysiker?
Advent calendar 2025—day 18: Pretty Dense
From Frei Otto’s acrylic Olympic roof to Clemens Hutter’s ice-warped steel, today’s quick quiz asks when water’s density starts dropping again above 0°C.
Advent calendar 2025—day 17: The Plastic
1960 brought Maiman’s ruby laser (pulsed) and Javan/Bennett/Herriott’s gas laser (continuous)—now guess the iconic plastic architecture in Germany linked to 1972 and tell us in the comments.
Advent calendar 2025—day 16: Laserblade
Lasers don’t just paint the night sky—they can slice 10-cm (4-in) steel, like Bernhard Müller-Feyen’s 1996 sculpture; can you guess the year the first laser was built?
Advent calendar 2025—day 15: And there was light
Tagblatt Tower—Stuttgart’s 1927–28 New Objectivity high-rise, first exposed-concrete skyscraper, once glowed with Moore gas-discharge tubes; what light did Moore sneer was “too small, too hot, too red”?
GNT Publishing