Science Center 2.0

By Cindy Landrum  

JANUARY 12, 2012 12:22 p.m. (0)

That’s what makes the Spartanburg Science Center’s new exhibits so exciting to the organization’s executive director John Green.

The Science Center is showcasing 14 new exhibits it received from Discovery Place in Charlotte during an open house Saturday. The old exhibits were informative, but not interactive, Green said.

“Children should experience how it works, why it works and actually see what makes it work,” he said.

It is the first major change in exhibits since the Science Center moved to the Chapman Cultural Center four years ago.

And a Spartanburg High student who fondly remembers school trips to the Science Center before it moved to the cultural center helped refurbish the exhibits as part of his work to become an Eagle Scout.

Mason Barrett, 15, is a Life Scout with Troop 2 at First Presbyterian Church. He still needs to earn a few merit badges to become an Eagle Scout.

Jeff Avery, a volunteer at the Science Center, was at Discovery Place in June when he began talking to one of the curators who mentioned the Charlotte science and technology museum had some exhibitions it didn’t use any more in storage in a warehouse. The storage building was costing the museum money and it wanted to get rid of them.

Days later, Green and Avery went back to Charlotte to pick out which of approximately two dozen exhibits the Science Center wanted. The Science Center paid nothing for the exhibits. It only had to pay for shipping.

“It wouldn’t have been possible if we had to pay for the exhibits,” Green said. The center’s old exhibits were given to the Park Hills Early Learning Center and Chapman Elementary School, a school that has a science and technology focus.

Some of the exhibits were disassembled or broken so Science Center Board member Dr. Nigel Cox, Barrett and the other scouts Barrett recruited to help him had to figure out how to put them back together.

Barrett said he picked the renovation as his Eagle Scout project because “it needed to be done.”

“The Science Center is cool. If the new exhibits help other kids enjoy it like I did, it’s all worth it,” he said.

Among the new exhibits is a room-size harmonograph, which Barrett describes as a huge spiral graph. Using the swinging oscillations of a pendulum table, users can create unique spiral images. The look of the images can be changed by manipulating weights and swings.

Several exhibits create visual special effects with the use of mirrors.

“Look into Infinity” has two mirrors that hang facing each other. Each mirror reflects the image in the other mirror, bouncing the reflections back and forth into infinity. Lights that border the back mirror illustrate how successive reflections get dimmer and smaller as the light is progressively absorbed.

Other exhibits use stationary bikes and the energy generated by students pedaling to play a stereo or power lights.

A sand pendulum allows children to create art using a pendulum. The pendulum helps them learn about motion.

“You’ve got to hook kids and keep them interested,” Green said. “Not everybody is going to be a mechanical engineer or a genetic biologist, but we are going to need people to fix robots and operate technological equipment. They’re going to have to understand how the machine works.”

Green said the new exhibits are the best things that have happened to the Science Center since it moved into the cultural center.

The center had to cut service by two days a week because of budget constraints.

Green said he hopes the new exhibits will give people a renewed interest in the Science Center.

“Science is an ever-changing study of the world we live in,” he said. “You don’t just learn science once. Real scientists never stop learning.”

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