THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, August 23, 1994 TAG: 9408240750
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: DAY TRIPPING
SOURCE: BY MATTHEW BOWERS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 118 lines
MUSEUM, SHMUSEUM. We wanna PLAY.
Sound like your kids? Fake them out and take them to a museum anyway, but one of those where children are welcomed and allowed - no, encouraged - to touch the exhibits. Take them to one like the Science Museum of Virginia.
It's a little bit of a drive from South Hampton Roads - two hours from the Interstate 264-Virginia 44 split. But, coupled with a nice lunch out or a stop at one of the Williamsburg outlet stores, it makes for an easily doable day trip in these waning, back-to-school-sale weeks of summer. Plus, it's air-conditioned.
And you'll have the last laugh, because they can't help but learn something in spite of themselves.
How many places are there where your children can sit in a real airplane and fiddle with the wing and tail controls?
Or replicate Galileo's famous experiment by dropping balls of different weights off a model of the Leaning Tower of Pisa to see that they, indeed, fall at the same rate?
Or stick their heads through a hole and make it look like their severed noggins are sitting on a platter of food?
The museum, housed in a former railroad station, is virtually all hands-on and interactive. Children race from one exhibit to the next, chipping off a piece of crystal here, flying a model plane in a wind tunnel there.
Some highlights from a recent visit:
The Ethyl Universe Planetarium and Space Theater, a 76-foot dome screen that rises over a steep bank of seats and gives moviegoers the sense of ``being there,'' as the museum's guest guide says.
``Wow-w-w!'' exclaimed the kids - and this just when a night sky scene full of stars was brought up on the screen, before the feature.
The 45-minute movie, ``The Journey Inside,'' is about computer microprocessors, the brains inside that make the computers work. Not exactly ``The Lion King,'' but it's made surprisingly interesting and exciting through a story of a schoolboy who foils the plans of some aliens with oversized heads to stall human technological advances. Everybody winds up computer-chip-sized and fighting inside a computer.
The monster screen and special effects were a little dizzying, but the kids pronounced the whole thing ``cool.''
A surprising favorite: a contraption where a plastic ball and a metal ball are dropped in a tube, the plastic ball on top. When they hit, the plastic ball shoots back up as the energy of the fall is transferred to it. Or something like that.
Whatever the science behind it, the kids loved it, calling to each other: ``Guys! Look at this!''
Car crash models, which simulate the forces involved in collisions and let you imagine what you could do to that playground bully, assuming he'd sit on the little runway. Hinged pieces of metal flip over as the vehicles hit head-on or strike a wall, roughly measuring how big a wallop they took. The head-on, two-vehicles-going-all-out collision is a good promotion for wearing seat belts.
Creating their own spiral pictures using a ``Harmonograph,'' a swinging pendulum contraption that holds felt markers. A large sheet of paper costs a quarter.
Air conditioning.
Let's see, what else? You could make a 10-foot hot-air balloon rise. See your own voice waves. Stand in marked spots in front of a curved wall and hear someone whispering 30 feet away. Sit in a replica of the ``Friendship 7'' Mercury space capsule and flip a lot of switches. Make paper airplanes and try to sail them into a ``cloud'' target.
There was an optical illusion room where you appeared to grow or shrink when you moved from one side to the other. Another exhibit allowed you to check the acid level of everyday kitchen items, such as vinegar and ammonia and a certain soft drink. ``Sprite has 4.0 amounts of acid in it!'' one girl said, amazed.
The video ``How Small Is an Atom?'' demonstrated the powers of 10 by depicting a man lying alongside Lake Michigan, zooming up, up, up many light years away, then focusing back down inside the individual atoms of his skin. This part may best be saved for after lunch.
You could experience ``Virtual Hoops,'' where you stand against a blank backdrop and play basketball with a video character, watching yourself on a TV screen. There are even bleachers for your friends.
And appropriate for a hands-on museum is a museum exhibit on hands: how they grip, how many bones and muscles they contain, how doctors reattach them when they're severed in an accident. Save this for after lunch, too.
Said lunch could be at The Cosmic Cafe downstairs, a cafeteria-style eatery featuring hamburgers, salads and daily specials. You might want to stick with Pierce's Pitt Bar-B-Que on the way home, although the cafe did have Jelly Bellies jellybeans to munch in the car.
``I liked the movie and the optical illusions,'' one girl summed up her visit. ``I learned about computers, and about the atom thing. And I learned that Sprite is just about all acid.''
And remember: The museum is air-conditioned. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
MATTHEW BOWERS
Anna R. Bowers pokes her head out of a display at the Science Museum
of Virginia.
Graphic
SCIENCE MUSEUM
Destination: Science Museum of Virginia, 2500 W. Broad St.,
Richmond
Travel time: Two hours from Interstate 264-Virginia 44 split
(Interstate 64 West to Richmond, Exit 190 onto Fifth Street, right
on Broad Street)
Hours: Monday through Thursday, 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Friday and
Saturday, 9:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Sunday, noon to 5 p.m.
Cost: Adults, $4.50: children 4-17 and adults 60 and older, $4;
children under 3, free; Omnimax film or planetarium show $2 extra,
or both for $3 extra
Parking: On-site, free, plenty of it
Gift shop: Yes
Food available: On-site cafeteria and snack vending machines,
plus loads of places in and on way to Richmond
For more information: Call 1-367-0000 or 1-367-1080
by CNB