Try out a new computer game and become a researcher? That’s possible now. The University of Graz and the Technical University have released a computer game. The aim of this game is to solve a big puzzle – one that the researchers themselves were unable to solve. Anyone can help.
It’s regarding an old altar. So an important “table” from a church. This altar was built around 1,500 years ago and stood in a church in East Tyrol. Today this church no longer stands. Only individual columns remind us of her.
Mystery regarding old altar
Parts of the altar were found in these remains of the church. These are many individual pieces of marble. To learn more regarding the past, the researchers wanted to put these pieces back together. So they wanted to find out what exactly the altar looked like.
But unfortunately that didn’t work. That’s why we had an idea. The thinking was: the more people help put the puzzle pieces (read: passl pieces) together, the greater the likelihood that the puzzle will be solved.
Computer game for everyone
The problem: They didn’t want to let many different people touch these altarpieces. After all, this is a valuable find. And nothing should break! But finally a solution was found – a computer game.
To do this, the individual stones were photographed very carefully and recreated on the computer. These “stones” can now be seen in the computer game. The game is called “Open Reassembly” (pronounced: open ri a sembli). This is English and means something like “open assembly”. And try to put them together correctly. It is hoped that many people can work together to solve the mystery of the altar.
This is an article from the current issue of KinderNachrichten – the OÖNachrichten weekly newspaper for 6-12 year olds. Further information: www.kinder or try it for free: www.kinder/testen
