You’ve found a treasure!

Raw material copper

First take a screenshot of the treasure picture to add it to your collection of resources. To do so, just scroll down a little.

You’ll also learn lots of exciting facts about lithium, a treasure of the future!

You don’t quite get what this is all about? Then take a look below to find out how you can take part in the treasure hunt!

Take a screenshot here!

Interesting facts: Copper is cool!

✨ Did you know that 10 to 15 per cent of the smartphone you’re holding in your hands is copper? Copper is contained in the circuit board and in various wires and connections. It ensures that your mobile phone works properly.

Urban mining

Pipes, cables, conductors: copper is versatile and demand for the metal is constantly increasing. For some time now, copper has not only been extracted from the earth, but also recycled from electronic waste. Here you can see how it works:

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Numbers games

Did you know that?

Ancient

Copper is one of the first metals known to humankind. It was already being used in the Stone Age, more than 10,000 years ago. Archaeological discoveries documenting this age were found in southern Anatolia in the settlement of Catal Hüyük from the early Stone Age. Copper has even lent its name to an entire era. Perhaps you’ve already heard of the “Copper Age”?

My dear friend and copperplate engraver!

In the past, engravers created copperplate engravings to print and reproduce paintings and illustrations. To this end, they carved a motif into a metal plate and applied paint, then pressed the plate onto paper. The result was a copy of an original. The verb “to copy” – that is, to imitate or even to fake – originates from this craft, which was widespread in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Alien music

In 1977, NASA sent two gold-plated copper records with images and sounds from Earth into space. The plates contain 115 images, greetings in 55 languages and a variety of sounds from nature such as rain, thunder, sea surf, birds’ tweeting and whale songs. They’re intended to tell aliens or future space travellers a story about our world. The copper disks were designed to keep their data intact for a billion years – probably longer than humanity itself is likely to exist. Here you can listen to the music tracks on the Golden Record:

Come with us on a treasure hunt!

This is what it’s all about:

Futurium’s current annual theme “Treasures of the Future” is all about raw materials. To celebrate this theme, we’ve joined forces with Berliner Stadtreinigung to transform selected BSR waste bins into “treasure bins”. With the help of our treasure map, you can discover them throughout the Berlin city area. The QR codes on the treasure bins conceal a total of five different raw-material treasures that need to be collected.

This is how you take part:

1. Open the treasure map here to get the GPS coordinates of all the treasure bins in Berlin or to select a prepared route where you are guaranteed to find all five different treasures.

2. Search for treasure bins in the city and scan the QR codes.

3. Take screenshots of the scanned resource treasures.

4. Collect the complete set of five resource treasures. (Here’s a little spoiler: the fifth treasure can only be discovered at Futurium!)

5. Come to Futurium for even more exciting knowledge about raw materials.

What are you waiting for? Grab your smartphones and off you go! Have fun with the “Treasures of the Future”.

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