Egyptian Mythology

Based on Chladni and Coanda effects from Physics

Ali Shtarbanov (MIT Media Lab)

The Egypt themed room contains a number of intriguing relics in it. On one wall of the room, there are 4 pictures with some mystical looking drawings on them. Each image has a title associated with it, but it is written in hieroglyphs. Right below the images, there are 4 large medallions, again with some hieroglyps on them. But the medallions seem to be stuck into the wall, and they cannot be removed (for now). In front of that wall, there is a table, on top of which there is a large circular plate and a large square plate, the square plate is positioned on top of a platform. Inside those 2 plates, there is sand, but the sand is behind a transparent acrylic sheet - so it cannot directly be touched. On the front side of the table, there are 40 bricks with a hieroglyph inscribed in each brick.

On another side of the room, there is an intriguing contraption that has 5 turning wheels at the bottom, 5 air-tubes above each wheel, and a ball for each air-tube. The leftmost side of the device is fully enclosed behind a transparent plate, inside of which a ball is levitating in mid-air enabled by the Coanda effect. To the right of it are 4 more balls that are not levitating, and no airflow is coming from the hoses. On the back of the device are some strange looking Egyptian drawings and hieroglyphs (not shown on the image). There is also a brightly-lit wavy line as shown. On the rightmost side of this device are 4 vertically-arranged cylindrical holes, equal in diameter to the holes that contained the medallions underneath the pictures on the other side of the room. You realize that you have to take the 4 medallions from under the images and place them here to start this machine.

You go back to the table, and try to figure out how to unlock the medallions. You see that the sand in the plate that is on the raised platform is arranged in a pattern identical to one of the images on the wall (say the first image, but it can be any image). You examine the corresponding image and look more closely at the name of that image. You then see that you can find the characters contained in the name in the bricks on the facade of the table. You push on one of those bricks and it goes inward and lights up. Wow! Then you do the same for the remaining characters, until you spell out of the name of the first image. If you push on a brick not found in the name, it simply springs back at you. This part of the puzzle requires collaboration and coordination, where one person will be looking at the image name and telling to another person which bricks to push in. (It could even be made, such that all bricks corresponding to the name would have to be held pushed simultaneously, in which case the requirement for multiple people would become mandatory.)

After entering the correct pattern, the first medallion comes out of the wall slowly and accompanied by a rumbling noise of bricks grinding against one another. LEDs light-up the image above the medallion, indicating that the first image has been unlocked. The bricks on the table retract back to the original position. A few seconds later, you hear the pharaoh's voice prompting you to look at the sand plate and you see that the sand on the rectangular plate is starting to rearrange itself in a different pattern - this time corresponding to say the 3rd image. In the same fashion, you look at the name of that image and then push the corresponding bricks on the table. The third medallion unlocks itself and comes out of the wall.

The same process repeats for the last two medallions. However for the 4th medallion, you also have the added complexity that you would need to swap the rectangular plate with the circular plate in order for that medallion to be unlocked.

After having unlocked all of the medallions, you can now insert them into the 4 holes on the ball-levitation device. Upon placing a medallion into a slot, an air-jet would start running. Note that since each medallion starts one air-stream, there is no need to wait for the first challenge to be completed before starting this challenge. As soon as one medallion is unllocked from the first challenge, another player can bring it to this device and start solving this challenge. Eventually, all 4 would need to be placed into the holes for the challenge to be fully solved though, but that can be done concurrently with the first challenge - allowing for a very collaborative interaction among all players.

After the air-jets are activated, the players would naturally be curious to make the 4 balls levitate in the air, just as the enclosed ball to the left already is levitating.

However, to solve the challenge, the players would have to realize that they need to adjust the levitation height of the balls to match the height of the lights on the back side. The playes can adjust the height of each ball by turning the corresponding wheel at the bottom of the device. Once they solve this, the balls would start dancing up and down autonomously in a cool way, and the players would enjoy the performance.