The Avid Reader (and enjoyer of all subjects)

Wow, it’s been a long time since the science museum.  I’m already in rural Jiangxi now, writing this, without my notebook with one page of notes (I quit after a while).  I also haven’t updated this recently.  With that being said, time for the post:

On the day that my mom, sister, and I took a bus and two different overly crowded subways to the Science Museum (enduring an hour of travel, all together), the weather forecast predicted thunderstorms and moderate to heavy rain.  We didn’t forget to pack our umbrellas, but we safely reached the Science Museum without getting wet.  Outside, we were greeted by a blue mascot whose name I forgot, but he symbolized the Expo 2010 China.  (To be frank with you, I have no clue what that means, but I know it is highly anticipated, showing up on advertisements whenever we watch TV.)  We didn’t take pictures because our camera didn’t have much energy left.  Then, we went inside. 

Once we got a roof over our heads, we went about seeing the exhibitions.  On the first floor, there was a place where children up to 11 years old could do fun experiments (I am about one and a half months from my 12th birthday).  However, because my sister and I were starving, we chose to skip the upcoming round of experiments and go for the 3:00 – 3:30 round.  At the food court, we had some appetizing dim sum.  I filled my stomach thoroughly.  After eating there, we went off to view the exhibitions. 

First, we visited the zoology section.  Inside the zoology section, there were a lot of artificial animals.  I was interested in a cheetah which had bitten off a gazelle’s leg.  My mom and sister did not like to witness such gore (even though it was fake), so they took interest in the pandas, elephants, and bears.  We continued on admiring everything.  Suddenly, my sister spotted her favorite animals–you guessed it, the mountain goat and bighorn sheep.  She really didn’t feel comfortable at the bobcat which was made to sneak up on the animals.  Then, we took an elevator to a man-made forest, where there were all sorts of fake animals that were powered somehow, and could move.  We saw a gigantic snake hissing at us.  Then, a Komodo Dragon snarled and bristled.  My mom informed me that male Komodo Dragons eat female Komodo dragons after they mate–such a thing occurred at the Washington, D.C. zoo.  I had heard of other mate-eaters, like female praying mantises and spiders, but such a formidable creature as a Komodo Dragon shocked me. 

Then, we went to the section for reptiles, insects, bats, and fish.  At the reptiles section, we saw two terrariums with turtles and lizards inside them.  They were actually real!  (I’m getting quite annoyed of the fact that science museums tend to show real-life reptiles, amphibians, and fish, not other small mammals.)  The insects section didn’t have anything real-life.  I saw a few man-made insects and used a light to identify some of them.  The bats section was just a place where we saw statues of bats with materials imitating bat noises.  At the fish section, we looked down and saw a long, winding shape covered by glass, with flowing water.  At first I didn’t see anything interesting.  Then, suddenly, a figure in the water which had seemed as a fake fish moved!  I went on investigating, and found out that there were many other types of fish below us.  There were also areas for other live fish, including catfish.  In one section, I saw a fish resembling a shark!  However, common sense told me that if sharks were inside the same cage as fish, the fish would be gone in a matter of minutes.

We went on to the next exhibit, which was a robot world.  In this place, we saw robots everywhere performing simple tasks that we humans could perform.  At one place, we saw two robots, each playing two games of Ranju (a game in which players have to use pebbles to make five of their color in a row).  I wanted to play, but two game boards did not work, and the rest of the people were crowded in two almost never-ending lines, so we continued.  There was also a place where you could have a robot draw an outline of you.  My sister wanted to be drawn, but again, the line was too long, as things that work and are of interest are normally crowded.  We also caught a glimpse of a robot playing piano.  Finally, after quite a lot of walking, we settled down at a center full of computers, where people could do many types of activities.  I was doing “Feed the Fish” when my mom told me that we had to go on to see everything else. 

Of course, we couldn’t skip the earthquakes section.  The main attraction here was a model of a real earthquake.  We hurriedly went through a few passageways to the entrance to an elevator.  After a 5-minute wait, 45 people squeezed into the roomy elevator.  A guide in the elevator said that we were moving 4-D style, through time.  We then arrived at the place where I had stood a few years ago, nervously waiting for the model earthquake.  Then, the lights dimmed, and the ground began to shake.  There was a sound of a baby crying (I’m not sure if it was real or fake) and glass shattering, among other sounds to make the earthquake seem real.  I hung on to the sidebar as the walk shook and rattled.  After only one minute, the earthquake was done.  We walked back out an exit to where we had originally been, waiting to board the elevator (surprising!).

I also wanted to visit a section specially for spiders (I wonder why a section probably as big as the whole animals section), but my mom and sister weren’t eager to see some of those “big, disgusting creepy-crawlies”, so we took a break.  After that, it was time for the chemistry lab, so we took a few escalators down to the first floor.  We were just in time.  Among everyone, I’d have to say I was embarrassingly tall, but I didn’t have any notion of chemistry, and I was quite interested in it.  We marched, single-file, to a stand good enough for our group of 8 and two instructors.  In our first experiment, we took 30 millileters of water, and then colored it with ordinary blue food coloring.  Then, we put inside a magical material.  After around 20 seconds, the water turned transparent again!  Then, after we sloshed it around for a while, the water turned into its original blue again!  Our next experiment was with colors.  It was partly about folding.  We took a small circular-shaped piece of paper, folded it into fourths, cut out a smaller circle, colored around that circle (I colored black), and then drew a few dots around that colored area.  After that, we took another circular-shaped piece of paper and wrapped it up, then inserted it into the small circle in our original piece.  Finally, we dipped the whole thing in water.  After a while, water began to spread throughout our original piece of paper, and multiple colors formed.  The result was a piece of artwork unmatched by any hand.  Then, we were done and did a few things meant for younger people than me.  The chemistry experiments were a positive experience for me, and I wish that I could do different experiments again.

Next, we visited the Aliens Section.  This showed how possible alien forms would look like.  There was also a section for animals which had previously been considered as science fiction, but were now science fact.  These included the vampire squid (which shows a long row of spikes when threatened), the gulper eel (which can eat animals much bigger than itself, and whose mouth is unproportionally big), and the octopus (!).  One day, our science fiction today will become science fact tomorrow.

Then, we visited the Cradle of Design, which had glances at the future world.  After that were two rooms whose names I forgot.  They were connected to each other.  These two rooms contained many games we could play right in there, some of which were totally unrelated to science.  I found a faucet, seemingly floating in midair, exciting.   From it poured a lot of water!  I suspected that there was a very thin wire that connected it to the ceiling, but it was disguised with the rest of the rooms.  There was also a place where we could ride on a bike right on a thread of ropes.  My sister tried that activity, which she said was scary, while I played a few basketball games. 

After that, the museum was about to close, so we left on the subway and rode a bus back to our home.  Though I had been gleeful when I went to the museum a few years ago, the museum seemed a bit fake this time, with only statues of animals and the rest of it not really resembling true science.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 5th, 2009 at 4:34 am and is filed under Fun. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.