Escape Room goes quantum physics in Urbana

It’s up to you and your team to save the free world from evil forces plotting its destruction, and you have precisely 60 minutes to do it. You must find out what happened to Professor Schrödenberg, a University of Illinois physicist who disappeared while developing a top-secret quantum computer that could crack any digital-security encryption code in the world. Unfortunately, the previous groups of special agents assigned to the case disappeared while investigating the very room in which you now find yourself locked up, Schrödenberg’s secret lab.

Siv Schwink
for Illinois Physics

LabEscape is a science-themed escape room at Lincoln Square Mall in Urbana, testing the puzzle-solving skills of groups of up to six participants at a time. Escape rooms, a relatively new form of entertainment cropping up in cities across the U.S. and around the globe, provide in-person mystery-adventure experiences that have been compared to living out a video-game or movie script. A team of participants is presented with a storyline and locked into a room with only one hour to find and decipher a sequence of interactive puzzles that will unlock the door and complete the mission.

U. of I. Professor of Physics Paul Kwiat initiated the LabEscape project as a community outreach effort, with the goal of showing that science is not only fun, it’s useful, relevant, amazing, and accessible to all.

“So many people have a fear of science and technology, because they have this idea that it’s too hard. So they don’t even try,” Kwiat comments. “But kids come into the world with the curiosity of scientists. Unfortunately, for many people, that gets lost. That’s why our first goal in creating LabEscape was to make it a fun and memorable experience, and I think we’ve achieved that.”

LabEscape opened its doors in January 2017 and more than 1,700 people have gone through to date. The feedback from participants on social media has been extremely positive. 

Two levels of play are available within the first storyline—the advanced mode adds several puzzles beyond those in the novice mode. A second storyline, a sequel that will play out in the same room with other puzzles, has been developed over the past six months and will launch in January 2018.

To make it all happen, Kwiat enlisted support from sponsors and the help of Physics Department colleagues, Professor Tim Stelzer and IT Director Rebecca Wiltfong, plus a group of 12 undergraduate physics students. Before the doors opened, Paul and his team had spent about a year developing the storyline, props, and video and then beta testing the adventure with volunteers. Together they’ve created a unique interactive adventure using puzzles largely based on physical phenomena. 

Kwiat emphasizes, no one need fear the science: the scientific knowledge required to solve any given puzzle is provided among the clues in the escape room. So while the storyline is based on quantum physics, no understanding of quantum physics is needed to succeed in saving the free world at LabEscape.

“Everything is targeted to a junior-high or high-school level of understanding. We’ve had a number of junior-high students go through and they all had a blast—they had no more trouble with the science puzzles than the physics graduate students!” Kwiat assures.

Kwiat adds, “Curiosity, communication, and collaboration—the three C’s—are really all that’s needed to solve the LabEscape puzzles. Incidentally, those same three attributes are integral to successful scientific research. The STEM fields—science, technology, engineering, and math—are vital to so many aspects of modern life, and we need more young people to select STEM career paths. So in addition to having fun, we hope young people who go through will achieve a sense that science is amazing, relevant, and useful in an accessible way. Of course we want everyone to appreciate that, not just students.”

In his own cutting-edge research, Kwiat manipulates the quantum behaviors of entangled photons to develop techniques for secretive communications with unbreakable encryption, so he is uniquely qualified to write Dr. Schrödenberg’s storyline.

“For me, a compelling escape room experience means the storyline needs to make perfect sense. Why there are puzzles and why there is a time limit—it all needs to fit the story. Physics-based puzzles work really well here because they are so interactive—we study and manipulate physical things and physical effects,” he shares.

Day-to-day operations at LabEscape are handled by a team of U. of I. student employees who have completed several core physics courses. Tickets are only $20 per person, or $15 with a student ID. Reservations must be booked online at LabEscape.org.