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A game app on quantum physics wins DIGITAL competition at the German Children's Media Festival.
The game app "Kitty Q–A Quantum Adventure" has convinced the children's jury at the German Children's Media Festival Goldener Spatz and won first prize in the DIGITAL competition. The prestigious award was presented June 3, 2022, in Erfurt to Professor Ralph Claessen, spokesperson of the Würzburg branch of the Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat–Complexity and Topology in Quantum Materials, and the app designer Philipp Stollenmayer.
The mobile game around the cute, half-dead Kitty Q and Anna, the great-granddaughter of the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Erwin Schrödinger, was developed under the auspices of the Cluster of Excellence of the Universities of Würzburg and Dresden and playfully inspires children and young people aged eleven and above to discover quantum physics.
Since October 2021, the ad-free mobile game has been available free of charge in German and English in the App and Play Stores. To date, it has been downloaded more than 100,000 times worldwide.
"We are immensely proud and happy to have received the GOLDEN SPATZ DIGITAL from a children's jury. This indicates to us that the intensive work has paid off. We have broken completely new ground with this. Normally, we juggle numbers and formulas or design materials in the lab. Here, however, the aim was to make the crazy world of quantum physics tangible for children. That's why we also learned a lot while working on Kitty Q. It's not easy, after all, to tell exciting stories that fascinate children! We are very happy that Philipp has embarked on this adventure and mastered the challenge so brilliantly! We will remember our lively discussions about cold chips, entanglements, donuts and Schrödinger's cat for a long time to come," Ralph Claessen emphasizes.
The playful approach has a serious background: The mobile game is intended to bring especially girls closer to science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) in a light-hearted way. Physics is a discipline with a particularly low proportion of women, after all.
The game app focuses on more than 20 exciting puzzles based on scientific facts from quantum physics. Those who want to learn what's behind the puzzles can access background information from the "Kittypedia", which is presented in an easy accessible way.
The real great-granddaughter and grandson of Erwin Schrödinger–Anna Braunizer and her father Leonhard–acted as patrons of Kitty Q. The German Research Foundation (DFG) funded the mobile game project with 100,000 euros as part of the International Research Marketing Ideas Competition.
"I am very happy about the GOLDEN SPATZ, because this award is very special: The children themselves decided what they wanted to award. This shows us that we are attracting the interest of our target group with this not particularly easy topic," comments the app designer Philipp Stollenmayer. With Kitty Q, he designed his first commissioned game for the Würzburg-Dresden Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat. Otherwise, he develops his games on his own and has already won all the major prizes in game design–most recently the Apple Design Award 2020.
GOLDENER SPATZ
The GOLDENER SPATZ is the largest festival for German-language children's media. Every year awards are given to the best film and television productions as well as to digital media products for children. From May 29 to June 4, 2022, the 30th German Children's Media Festival Goldener Spatz took place in Gera and Erfurt. The DIGITAL competition brings together the eight best digital, audiovisual storytelling products for children up to the age of 12. The focus is on digital storytelling in its many forms. The competition was looking for good stories told in new, digital, audiovisual ways. The main prize–the coveted GOLDENER SPATZ DIGITAL – was awarded by the target group itself. Five young experts between the ages of 10 and 12 from Germany and other German-speaking countries made up the DIGITAL children's jury.
Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat
The Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat–Complexity and Topology in Quantum Matter is a joint research collaboration by Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg and Technische Universität (TU) Dresden since 2019. More than 270 scientists from 34 countries and four continents perform research on topological quantum materials that reveal surprising phenomena under extreme conditions such as ultra-low temperatures, high pressures, or strong magnetic fields. The Cluster of Excellence is funded within Excellence Strategy of the federal and state governments–as the only cluster in Germany that traverses federal state boundaries.
Katja Lesser, Public Relations Manager of the Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat, Phone: +49 351 463 33496, katja.lesser@tu-dresden.de
https://www.kamibox.de/katzeQ-media Photos of the award ceremony will be available as of late Friday evening! On our media server you will find a variety of image, text and video material. All files may be used freely for reporting about the game app "Kitty Q" with copyright notice.
https://katzeq.app More information about the app can be found on the corresponding website
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