Since 2019, the VU University Library has had three 3D printers. Together with a VR installation, these are housed in the Tech Lab (NU 1A-25). Lecturers, students and other VU employees can come here with innovative ideas. That there is no shortage of these becomes clear when you take a look at the display case with already printed objects. For example, your eye is quickly drawn to a small model with impressive details. “It is a 3D print of one of the mausoleums along the Via Appia, the famous ancient highway that ran from Rome to Brindisi,” says Tech Lab manager Linde Voorend.
Toilet bowls, cheese slicers and Pokémon
Other items that quickly attract attention are the countless minuscule toilet bowls. The objects are part of a set of avatars that have been printed for the board game ‘Causes of Inequality’. Two sociology teachers developed the game to let students look at the subject of inequality with a different perspective. "We used the objects to let students play a serious game about social inequalities", sociology teacher Stef Bouwhuis explains. "In this case, the objects are not the focus of the learning, but by gamifying the subject you get students excited and involved, while at the same time they see how theories about social inequalities have an effect in real life."
New perspectives
3D-printed objects are also used in the Faculty of Science. For example, Voorend, in collaboration with two lecturers from the quantum chemistry course, printed a series of 'orbitals'. The almost 30 centimetre high 3D models illustrate the area around an atomic nucleus, in which electrons with a certain energy are most likely located. The series of six printed orbitals enables students to better visualise the abstract situation. Thanks to these innovative techniques, new aspects of a subject can be illuminated, allowing students to look at age-old problems from different angles.
