If your city or state has a science museum, take a day or maybe a slow weekend and visit. You won’t be at all disappointed, you’ll have fun and you will learn something, whether you want to or not. Walking through the museum, when you’re least expecting it, the knowledge just seeps in by osmosis.
State or local facility, science museums are just cool places. We’ve been twice as a club to the Science Museum of Western Virginia in Roanoke but we wanted to go back to the larger museum in Richmond because we hadn’t been as a club since 1991. I imagine some of you reading this weren’t even born when we took that first trip.
For at least a year we have been attempting to find the best time to visit our state science museum in Richmond. As with any large group, trying to find a perfect date for everyone who wants to go is nearly impossible. So we’ve struggled for a while trying to fit everyone in and work around multiple schedules. Our trip coordinator finally threw up her hands, discussed it with me and we decided to just pick a date and hope it was agreeable with the majority, even if it meant more schedule juggling while attempting to get group admission rates.
This past Saturday we finally got it all pulled together and a bunch of us made the two-plus hour drive … caravanning and carpooling … to Richmond and the Science Museum of Virginia.
The building, an ages-old converted railway station, is massive with columns and fountains out front and remnants of tracks and ticket areas throughout. There’s quite a bit of nostalgia mixed in with the exhibits, which adds to the enjoyment of the day.
We arrived and paid for our admission, which included all the exhibits PLUS one of the Dome shows.
The massive Dome theater has the largest screen in the state of Virginia and is such a treat. Most of us chose to see Imagine the Moon, a 45 minute tour of the moon, the cosmos, surrounding space bodies and a brief history of that orb while images swirled around and above our heads. Lying back in comfortable theater seats to accommodate looking up without neck damage, the show was awesome.
The first thing that greets you in the lobby of the museum, as well as volunteers and employees is a huge Foucault Pendulum. A heavy brass pendulum is suspended from the very high ceiling and moves back and forth above a flat earth globe that is inlaid into the floor. Pegs surround the globe. The movement of the pendulum is constant and not controlled by electronics of any kind. Its movement is a direct result of the rotation of the Earth and the pegs are knocked down periodically by the pendulum. It’s all very scientific AND fascinating although it would take too long to explain it (even if I could). Suffice it to say the pendulum is fascinating and one of my favorite features at the museum.
During the day we visited as many exhibits as we could. We went to a live show about the planets, presented by a meteorologist that was beautiful and interesting. We saw space suits, astronauts, moon rocks and learned all about relativity. Our friend, Tim explained it simply. He said if we don’t want to age so fast, just take a little jaunt into space where the aging process is slowed down … relatively. That’s good enough for me.
There are live science labs set up so children and adults can have “hands-on” time with an active bee hive, architecture, weather, plants and pollinators, magnets and genes, to mention a few.
We saw lizards, snakes, bees, and Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches. I found the snakes more pleasing than over-sized roaches and we moved on to more hands-on experiments (I loved the Quacker Smacker). We had our pictures taken with Curious George and pretended to book a flight on a rocket ship aimed towards space. (We should NEVER be too old to pretend.)
Even before we had paid our admission and decided on a Dome show, my husband and several others of us decided, while looking over the offerings of the day, that they wanted to attend a presentation called RAT BASKETBALL. Well, really … who wouldn’t? So I went along because I just wanted to see what that was.
We went to an auditorium where a museum volunteer was setting up a very tiny basketball court with hoops and basketballs. The next thing he did was remove a white rat and a spotted rat from little sawdust-filled carriers and placed them on the court. He told us about the rats, how they are very intelligent creatures that are easy to train and work with, who don’t present a problem with rabies and, apparently, they just enjoy basketball. With that, he gave a nod and the two rats began playing the game with what appeared to be enthusiasm. REALLY …
The presenter asked how many in the theater were afraid of rats and a number of hands went up. My thought on the whole thing, from the perspective of the glass half full or half empty was that they were super cool playing basketball but seeing one in my kitchen in the middle of the night changed the whole dynamic for me. I DID appreciate the fact that a recently added brown rat had just slam-dunked the ball on the far court and racked up another two points, headed for the win. The little thing had a lilt to its gate that just screamed of having a really good time. I was hooked … sort of.
People in our party were taking pictures and several made videos of that fast and furious basketball game. The “handler” or coach or whatever he REALLY was rewarded each rat with a Grape Nuts nugget after each successful turn at the hoop. (I wondered if a Grape Nuts nugget or two would make Steph Currie’s performance even better but kept that question to myself. I’ll have plenty of time to ask it later when my club members and I eventually discuss, in depth, the merits of Rat Basketball).
After we got home, I put an album of the pictures from our science museum trip on Facebook. I just wanted to share the fun we had with those who hadn’t been able to make the trip. As an afterthought I shared the video our friend, Tim made of a small segment of the RAT BASKETBALL game. I decided mentioning it or adding a “still” photo of that unusual and exciting athletic event just wasn’t enough. People really had to SEE it to believe it, so the video went on my Timeline.
The first response I got to the Rat Basketball video was from my friend, Chris. He wrote, “Just when I thought I’d seen everything there was to see, along comes THIS…” My response was, “Me, too, Chris. They were pretty AMAZING. I’ve decided to respectfully call them the ‘Sewer Trotters’.”
To me, in their own way and in their own space, those rats were every bit as good as the Globe Trotters EVER were.
SLAM-DUNK! Two Points for the Rats!!!!!!!!!!!!
heimdalco 