The last big part of the museum we explored is the “cool stuff” area. This area of the museum has lots of practical physics principles being demonstrated.
We started out at a big Archimedes screw, which is a rotating screw used to lift things like water (or small beads) uphill. Felix sat in my lap as I cranked on the screw, and he did well despite the noise of the surrounding exhibits!
Next I picked up a gyroscopic box that had a gyroscope spinning inside. It made the box very hard to hold onto! Felix just chilled in my lap.
We got a couple of pictures of me underneath the “Cool Stuff” sign. Integrated into the sign are two ways that you can discover how a ball of a larger mass can affect a ball of a smaller mass when it hits it. Brad got a video of me demonstrating that principle and Felix being surprised but not too worried about the flying tennis ball!
The next part of the display was all about wind! They had a wind table to move a sailboat, a giant pressure chamber that allowed you to use pressure to move pieces of paper, and they had a hairdryer shooting air up that you could balance a ball on top of!
There was a broken exhibit that showed how gears work, so Brad got a few pictures of me trying to figure that out. They also had a bed of nails! This is a bed with the nails retracted. You lie on the bed, and then press a button and the nails come out and lift you up. This way you can feel how the pressure is distributed between so many points that the nails don’t actually hurt you! Felix sat on my stomach while this occurred and he was such a good boy!
Finally we did a little photo shoot with the interesting colored lights in the “Cool Stuff” area. I got several good shots of Brad holding up a small colored light of his own!
Tomorrow will be my last blog entry about our museum scouting trip, in which we go outside and explore a couple of parks in the area!