Excursion: Ithaca Sciencenter

I find that the more fun we are having, the more we are in love with a place, the less pictures we take.

I suppose this isn't the best when it comes to remembering things exactly and keeping you all abreast of what's going on in our lives, but a wise man once told me that taking photographs is taking yourself out of the moment.  Brendan was from Ireland, and he felt it was a sign of insanity and deep depression that Americans spent their happy times poised behind the lens of a camera.  I think he might have a point...  it's tough to balance capturing the moment with living in it.

Ithaca is lovely.  It has all the amenities of urban awesomeness, the quaintness of small town America, the eco-green consciousness of the hippie community, and the adventure possibilities of the mountains all over this fine country.  It might just have everything.  I have the idea that our family could thrive here... but we are not far into our journey just yet.

One of the first things we did was to pick up a few local papers, including one focused on children in Ithaca, and we found the Sciencenter.

Our family has visited many a science center in our wanderings, even before the bus... honestly, none can compare to this.

Both kids loved the fluid dynamics area.  There are also a place where you could use metal bricks to build a dam.  Here, you can see Maeryn using the shoots to launch rubber duckies down a hill and into a trough.  There were materials you could use to back up the water - these included different holes to allow differing amounts of water to flow. 

Maeryn also enjoyed the recycled art station.  All of the materials were provided.  She worked on a fairy house.  Materials:  old CDs, yogurt cups, paper, plastic lids, netting, and more.

This was a station for working with magnetics.

Working with nano-particles.  This exhibit was sort of like a live World of Goo.  Jonah is wearing a lizard hand puppet he found around the museum.  One the floor with the "goo", you could also find carbon molecule models you could take apart and put back together (each molecule the size of a small child and made of foam materials), bee keeping equipment, a command center for a space shuttle, and machines to read your brain waves.

We spent all day here in the blessed air conditioning, minus the several minutes spent on the outdoor exhibits (including musical instruments made from recycled materials, bubble stations, a giant fluid dynamics exhibit with more rubber duckies than you could possibly imagine, and giant wooden play structures).  On our way out, we bought some silver coated irregularly shaped magnets to play with in our metal filled home.