How will we be traveling in the future? With the Hyperloop, perhaps - on which a team from TUM is also conducting research? In the birthday show on March 7, our students Domenik Radeck and Wonyoung Choi demonstrate how this superfast train of the future is supposed to work, when it travels through a tube at almost the speed of sound one day ("Geburtstagssendung mit der Maus“, 9:a.m. on ARD, 11:30 a.m. on Kika and afterwards in the ARD media library). Whatch Hyperloop film at 45’47 minutes (Youtube).

It looks like shortbread – but it's something different: PhD students Ahmed Fahmy and Martin Heckl from the Chair of Brewing and Beverage Technology at the TUM School of Life Sciences have baked, or actually printed, a mouse loaf from the 3D printer for the mouse's 50th birthday. First, the young scientists modeled an image of the mouse on the computer, then translated it for 3D printing using slicer software, and finally printed it out in about 30 minutes using a 3D printer – and even baked it at the same time. This printer is used for research by the group of PD Dr. Mario Jekle, and has been extensively adapted and optimized for food processing. The dough for the mouse is a mixture of wheat starch, soy protein isolate and water. During printing, the mouse was heated, i.e. 'baked', with an infrared beam using a so-called inline heating process.

And how does the 3D mouse bread taste? "A bit like a cookie, but we're still working on a real 'mouse' flavor," says Ahmed Fahmy. Incidentally, the research group headed by Dr. Mario Jekle is researching this process in order to better understand the production of foods such as baked goods on the one hand and to make it much more accurate on the other. In the future, this will make possible completely new and individualized products and new quality characteristics. Jekle: "When we were children, the Mouse show inspired us to stay curious and always keep learning. With our 'Mouse Print', we want to thank her with all our heart."

We also fondly remember the many Mouse Open Door Days Opener at the Heinz Meier-Leibnitz Research Neutron Source in Garching. The video was made by the Heinz Meier-Leibnitz Center (MLZ), under whose organizational umbrella the scientific work of the neutron researchers at TUM, Forschungszentrum Jülich and Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht is combined.

In 2011, Mouse presenter Ralph Caspers and his camera team visited the Deutsches Museum in Munich and took a look behind the doors of one of the world's largest science and technology museums.

Incidentally, the Deutsches Museum is not only home to our experimental laboratory, the TUMlab, but man an exhibitions has been designed together with our researchers. As a Leibniz Institute, the museum is also a research partner of the TUM, whose Director General Prof. Dr. Wolfgang M. Heckl holds the Chair of Scientific Communication at the TUM. The museum was founded over 100 years ago by our alumnus and electricity pioneer Oskar von Miller.

What happens when lightning strikes a car with 850,000 volts? Armin Maiwald and Willi Weitzel tried it out in the TUM lightning laboratory, or more precisely: the high-voltage hall at the TUM Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering .

• What causes lightning – „Stories to laugh and lern“ 2006 (Youtube, from the Bibliothek der Sachgeschichten by Armin Maiwald)