“Dancing Flowers” at Experimenta Science Center

A child picks six cards out of the tray and lays them in a row. Record. All blossoms. Open. Blue. Stop. Play. One by one they go on the scanning pad, each appearing on the tablet, and then the table answers: petals lift, cores glow blue. That is an algorithm, felt before anyone says the word.

How it works

The screen asks one question. Blütentanz — how do you make the flowers dance? The answer sits in open trays in front of it, thick cards you pick like playing cards: open, close, wait, a colour. Others choose who moves — a single blossom by its number, the odd ones, the even ones, all of them at once.

Every program begins with record and ends with stop and play. In between, place a card on the pad and it joins the program on the tablet. Press play and the blossoms perform it, petals opening and closing, cores shifting from blue to purple to green. Change one card, run it again, and the dance changes with it. A start, steps in order, an end: the whole lesson, in your hands.

Barrier-free by design

Every card leads with a picture, so a child who cannot read yet still connects the card to what the flowers do. Below the picture stand the German and the English word, and the tablet switches between the two. Every card also carries Braille, so a visitor with impaired sight can read the command by touch. And the same deck exists on screen, selectable with a joystick, for visitors who cannot place a card at all.

None of it made the exhibit plainer. The pictures are what make it quick.

The result

A permanent exhibit has to explain itself. It has to be understood on the first try, by whoever walks up to it. This one teaches what an algorithm is without a line of code on screen.