With that many people loving science, we'll be ok, right?

Saturday, January 24, 2009

It was Cyber Chase Day at the New York Hall of Science. Rocket Boy had been looking forward to it for weeks, thanks to daily reminders on PBS. I was all for it, that was, until we actually walked in. The place was mobbed and ill equipped to handle such a huge group. The lines were long and the transactions took forever with lots of people asking oh so may redundant questions, especially if they had spent any of their long waiting time actually reading any of the admissions signs. After we finally got through the line we got into another line for the coat check, found out that we had to by coat check tickets when we got out admission, went back to admission, got back in the coat check line, got in line for Cyber Chase (free tickets, but handled separately from admission, all gone by the time we got there at noon L), then got in line for the bathroom. It took over 45 minutes from the time we walked in the door till we got into the line for our first exhibit.

After the third time we had someone get in front of us, I got very firm about letting other children and their parents know that several children had been waiting patiently in line and that their children could wait there, at the end. Had I not done that, Rocket Boy would never have gotten a chance to experiment with the tennis exhibit or try to pick up rocks from the bottom of the ocean. I am flabbergasted that some people just do not understand a basic social contract of first come, first served. Nor do they seem interested in teaching their children of being conscientious of others.

Aside from the crowds, the museum had some great exhibits, well designed to teach all sorts of concepts. We were both particularly mesmerized by the comet simulator (using dry ice dropped into a shallow pool). He also loved the Mobius strip experiment – absolutely amazed by cutting the strip in half. Rocket Boy got a little frenetic at one point, zooming from one exhibit to another, pushing buttons and levers, and running to the next. All flash no content. I stopped him and we took a break for lunch. We talked about the reasons for the exhibits, which is not just to push buttons, and resolved to address the next exhibits a little more calmly. The break worked and the afternoon was far less frenetic.

We will go back, but on a weekday and I will try to pair it with lessons during the week. We may even wait till the science playground is open in the spring. I’ve read about it in landscape magazines and can’t wait to try it out first hand. It looks fun!