Mathematics You Can Touch is an exhibition that aims to create a new approach towards a better understanding of mathematics. It presents and helps visualize the supposedly most abstract of all the sciences in a manner that can be grasped by the senses and thus makes mathematics more comprehensible. It is suited for all age groups and does not require any preparatory training.

What exactly is involved in this new approach? All the experiments bank on a playful approach to mathematics. They are unswervingly thought-provoking and amazing and compel one to ask oneself "why is this so?" By reaching the answers for oneself the significance of the phenomena can be discovered. The exhibition involves grasping, using one’s hand, head, and heart, and can thus provide new impulses for the mathematics instruction in schools.

Visitors of all ages and all educational backgrounds are encouraged to experiment: they can solve puzzles, build bridges, wreck their brains while unraveling riddles, watch a sphere race, let wonderful soap bubbles come into being—and while doing so, they are always incidentally involved in mathematics.

The Goethe-Institut enters uncharted waters with this exhibition. All the more reason why we are very happy to get a renowned partner for this project. The "Mathematikum" in the town of Giessen is the first interactive mathematics museum in the world. Mathematics You Can Touch displays a selection of especially proven and established experiments from the exhibition in Giessen, where one is invited to try out and think over more than 160 exhibits. Since its opening ten years ago, around 1.5 million visitors have experienced the exhibition.

The Goethe-Institut will offer (self-)guided tours of the exhibition in German and English, quizzes and contests with prizes for German learners, information and classroom materials for German teachers and much more. School classes are welcome to sign up for the tour.