Michelle has the week off from school. We’d originally kicked around the idea of going to Disneyland.
It was too expensive, so that became, “What a great week to work on the second half of the kitchen cabinet renovation.
After the car accident, that deteriorated into, “Maybe we could finish the secondary bathroom renovation.”
After termite infestation that became, “Maybe we could just get water line hooked up for the refrigerator.”
After the dishwasher died, that became, We’re just sitting around all week doing nothing.”
Still, I want to try to do some â€fun“ things with Michelle. Today was out because the termite people were coming, and she had a dentist’s appointment. The termite people miss-scheduled the date and the dentist cancelled, leaving us flat-footed, with half the day gone, and nothing planned.
We decided to take the kids down to the Arizona Science Center. I’ve been there before. it was brand new at the time and wasn’t too impressed as it seemed incomplete and had the most mind-numbingly dull exhibits, but I decided to give it another try.
I’m not really sure what to expect from a â€science center“, as I’ve only ever been to a handful of them, the most notable being the Singapore Science Centre.
The Singapore Science Centre was cool. There’s lots of fun and informative exhibits, although, as I recall, it was somewhat heavily loaded towards technology. It was great and I’d love to take the kids to a place like that again.
The Arizona Science Center is… I hate to say it, but, the Arizona Science Center is rubbish. It has loads of so-called science stations, which are really incredibly dull. Most of them seem to be supplied by local businesses. I’ve got no problem with sponsorships, but surely they can come up with some interesting exhibits.
What’s with the gallery that’s entirely comprised of explaining how a house works? Yes, I suppose making a light switch work is science, but that was the most exciting exhibit in that gallery. What’s the science lessons behind learning how to install hot and cold water pipes?
You could probably spend hours of tedium in the largest part of the center, the section on life sciences. There are completely dull displays on various aspects of the human body. Most of which are as engaging as reading a textbook on the subject, except that you get to move from chapter to chapter by changing seats, and occasionally pushing a button to hear some narration, watch a video or see a light turn on.
Earth sciences were marginally better. There was a bit of amusement to be had playing with the various exhibits that erode sand via wind, water and vibration, but for every mildly fun one, there’s another like the â€crank a wheel to make a row of lights turn on and as they pass points, a little block of text pops up to tell you about the water table.“ Ho Ho Hum!
Then there was what I believe to be a temporary exhibit on strange matter. The ferro-magnetic liquids were fun, but the display was so dirty you could barely see it. Many of the exhibits were on material stress. I suppose that might induce certain types of engineers to get a hard on, but as an interesting display for kids (or most anyone else) it was repetitive and static. Not surprisingly, the one really dynamic display, attempting to put a bowling ball through tempered glass, was the most popular.
A more interesting lesson might have been in explaining some of the mechanical processed used by the crank mechanism to raise the bowling ball into strike position, but there was nothing on that.
Where are the displays on light, sound, astronomy and physics? It’s as if they missed everything important and jumped right the whatever cheap junk they could get sponsored by local companies. Despite their colossal, expensive white albatross of a modern building, they whole place seems like it was done on the cheap.
The whole fiasco really saddens me.
I made a (small) donation to the science center. I hope they use it to go look at other science centers and pick up a few pointers.
Technorati Tags: Arizona, Blog, Natural Sciences, Science