26.05.2019

The RTG takes part in the „Tübinger Fenster für Forschung“ (TÜFFF) 2019

We joined in!!

On Friday, 24 May 2019 the “Tübinger Fenster für Forschung” (TÜFFF) took place at Tuebingen University. The audience was invited to experience some of the research conducted in Tuebingen: many University Departments, Research Training Groups and Collaborative Research Centres presented their work by means of guided tours round laboratories, presentations, a science slam and much more.

The RTG 1808 has participated as well. Asya Achimova, Natascha Elxnath, Simon Grund, Miriam Lahrsow, Sarah Metzger, and Christian Stegemann introduced the visitors to ambiguity via two different ways:

• First, there was an interactive experiment on scope ambiguity (developed by our post-doc Asya Achimova), with the example sentence ‘Which flavour of ice-cream did every dog eat?’ Participants saw animated videoclips with dogs eating different flavours of ice-cream. Different answers were possible depending on how the participants considered the scope of the quantifier. It was possible that participants identified a single flavour of ice-cream that was eaten by every dog. It was also possible that participants matched the different flavours of ice-cream to the individual dogs that had eaten them. The existence of these two possible answers showed the audience what ambiguity is.
• Second, the RTG provided the visitors with jokes that played on ambiguity. For example, consider a scenario where a policeman asks a vampire who is driving in a car: “Did you drink anything?” The vampire answers: “Just two ‘Radler’”. Here ‘Radler’ can denote a beverage with beer and lemonade, but it can also mean ‘cyclist’.

Visitors thus had the chance to experience scientific work on an everyday basis and at the same time received information on dissertations, university studies and career paths, Research Training Groups and the possibilities of funding via the DFG, the German Research Foundation.