Jakob Thurau

What motivated you most to participate to Odysseus contest?

In my scool we talked about our universe and I learned a lot about it. I found that topic very interesting, so I invented a game “What do you know about our universe?” My teachers, Mrs Wendt and Mrs Gnutzmann, told me about the ODYSSEUS II Contest. I like taking part in competitions (e.g. in Germany there are the Mathematikkolympiade and the Känguruh-Challenge for Maths and since I was 8 years old, I participated). So I decided to  take part in ODYSSEUS II Contest too.

What did you enjoy when you prepared your project?

At first, it was a lot of fun to invent my own dice with rules and questions and to formulate the right and the wrong answers (In my game you have to answer multiple-choice questions and only if you are right, you can move along). My uncle in Viena helped me to deal with the questions. Some of the questions he recommended were very difficult, so I had to read up and research for the right answers. That was very interesting and fascinating for me.

What was the most important thing that you learned during the preparation of your project?

I learned a lot about our universe, much more than I learned in school about that topic. For  instance, my parents told me that Pluto was called a planet when they were at school. I didn´t know that. From my uncle I learned much about the Project Apollo, as he is also very interested in Space Sciences.

Has the work done for your project affected your decision for studies in space science?

I would like to become a researcher. But, at the moment I don´t know precisely what science I would like to study.