Connecticut Science Center - Danielle Harlow

The Association for Science and Technology Centers (ASTC) was hosted by the Connecticut Science Center in Hartford, CT. The workshop that Ron and I presented there took place in the science center and our participants explored the exhibits and created a matrix for one of the exhibits. The Connecticut Science Center is huge. It is 154,000 square feet (that's 9x the size of MOXI), but not all that space is exhibit space. They have a theater, multiple classrooms/labs, a butterfly pavilion, and a lot of open space in the lobby area. There are 6 primary exhibit galleries organized by theme. 

This was my favorite exhibit: The laser harp.

The laser harp looks like a harp, but has no strings. Instead there is a row of lasers and as you move your hand through the harp, breaking the laser beam, music plays. There is also a knob to change the type of music played.

Another favorite exhibit was this one. It's a projection on the ground, that as you walk across makes music as if you're playing the instrument with your feet. The first time I walked through the gallery, it was a glockenspiel (picture on left) and the next time it was a piano (picture on right). Later it was a game like space invaders.

Another exhibit that I liked was the river table. It was one of the few open ended exhibits that the groups explored (others were the harp above and their version of the air column workshop). The river table was very simple. It was just a long table full of "mud" (rubber pieces like you find as playground surfaces) that children could manipulate. There was a water spout at the top that was a challenge in itself to figure out how to turn on. 

The museum also had a lot of exhibits that seemed open-ended but when you actually worked with them, they were less so. This exhibit is one of several in their Rube-Goldberg contraption area. You set it up (set dominoes up that are attached at the base, etc) and release a ball and a bell rings. There are very few decisions that the visitor can make, but the mechanisms are visible to the visitor, similar to our sound machine exhibit. 

There were a lot of floor staff present because of the ASTC conference, but I did not actually get a chance to observe them interacting with guests because they (and we) were occupied with the conference work. The Science Center staff were mostly making sure participants knew where to go and helping us (and the other workshop presenters in the building) make sure that things were running smoothly.