Our Favourite Creations
The Hunt for Dark Matter web app
The Hunt for Dark Matter depicts the phenomenon of gravitational lensing, and shows how we use this to find where dark matter is in the universe. The app starts with an interactive tutorial and ends with a puzzle game that is a cross between Battleships and Minesweeper. The user's goal is to find hidden dark matter by carefully observing its effect on nearby galaxies.
Having an engaging puzzle game forces the player to think about what they've learned and put it into action. If they haven't learned and really understood how dark matter gravitationally lenses the images of galaxies they cannot win the game.
Testing has shown us that when people race through the tutorial too fast the existence of the game forces to go back and replay the tutorial at a slower pace, to gain the knowledge required to solve the puzzles. They then come away with a genuine understanding of gravitational lensing.
The Hunt for Dark Matter was funded by grants from the European Research Council, The Royal Society, La Caixa and CNRS. If you're funded by any of these agencies, you can fund a similar project about your research!
Te Ao Marama video with Stated Clearly
It is very difficult to make a video about new research that actually achieves what the researcher wants it to achieve. Firstly, if the video is to achieve anything, it needs to actually be watched. But, it also needs to give the watcher some genuine understanding of the new research. The problem is not just making a video about research engaging enough to keep someone's attention, it is also convincing people to start watching the video in the first place.
Jon Perry at Stated Clearly is rare in that he can achieve this feat. He produces videos that educate a large number of viewers, successfully, about modern research topics.
We worked with Jon to produce a video for the Te Ao Marama Centre for Fundamental Inquiry at Auckland University about their research. The video covers the differences between DNA and RNA, and what this means for their possible primordial origins. It is everything we expected from a channel like Stated Clearly: engaging, interesting, accurate, and effective at conveying the concepts Te Ao Marama wanted conveyed.
Tens of thousands of people now know about Te Ao Marama and their research, and have a better understanding of the possible origins of these essential molecules for complex life.
