Museum of Science and Industry with Stephanie


Museum of Science and Industry

Stephanie stayed over night at our house and the next day we went to the Museum and Science and Industry. Steph had actually visited this museum before, but didn’t remember. This is what she looked like last time we visited:

Museum of Science & Industry Mirrors
MSI in 2004

Compare that with the first photo. Yes, I think I understand why she does not remember. Our first visit was in 2004 and she was 7 years old! Now she is 16! (Bonus points if you can spot Jess as a baby in the above photo.)


It’s a bird, it’s a plane!


Moo


Using the birthday gift we gave her last year.

We bought our tickets to the museum on kiosks that they now have available. So much easier than standing in the line and checking out with the cashier. We got general admission + tickets to the special MythBusters exhibit. We had 15 minutes to wait until our time in that exhibit so we hung around the scale model of Chicago and the train exhibit until then. I’m not really into trains, but I’ve seen this exhibit a few times and it is impressive.


MythBusters!


Building a construction that the tornado can’t blow down.


Black light, white teeth!


Dodging a bullet.

The MythBusters exhibit was really fun. There were lots of propos from the shows, video screens with different features and all kinds of myth displays where they would tell if the myth was busted, plausible or confirmed. Steph said that her family used to watch this show a bunch and so she knew who the people were on the show and had seen some of the myths on TV. I’ve seen the show some, but not as much, but it was still fun to interact with it all in person.

PLUS, there were a ton of interactive features where you test a myth they featured on the show and draw your own conclusion. There was one where Steph built a house out of different materials and then put it in a machine that simulated a tornado to see how it would stand up to the wind. One where you tested if butter landed buttered side up or down. Steph pulled a table cloth out from under a table set with dishes. It was actually so easy to do it was a bit underwhelming. In one experiment Steph walked through “the rain” and I ran through it. Then we went under a black light to see who was more wet. Somehow the black light illuminated the water on us, but we were more interested to see what the black light was doing to our clothes and teeth! In the final experiment Stephanie tested her reflexes to see if she’d be able to dodge a bullet. We didn’t realize that practicing dodging bullets was going to come in handy in just a few minutes.


MythBusters Live


Dodge a paintball

Our last thing in the MythBusters exhibit was to attend the live show. There was a small theater set up and luckily they were about to start the next show right as we walked in. Stephanie volunteered to be a part of the show where they would prove whether or not it was possible to dodge a bullet. First we tested whether reactions to visual cues or sound caused a quicker reaction (it’s sound). Unfortunately, in all experiments, Steph was the slower reactor. Maybe it was lucky, though, because the other volunteer, Jeff, had to put on all this protection and try to dodge a speeding paint ball!


Mirror maze.

Somehow we wandered our way through some petroleum exhibit that was sort of boring. And into a mirror maze. Which was ok, but not that maze-y. Not very hard, at least.


Science Storms Exhibit


A tornado inside the museum.


What we looked like after spending some time in a wind tube.

Finally, with the time that we had left, we wandered around the Science Storms exhibit. I wasn’t expecting much here, but it was actually really fun and interesting. There were a lot of interactive features and a lot of modern touch screens. There was even an area where a vortex, or tornado, was simulated and you could go inside of it.


Ductigami


Do these protons make my mass look big?

Before we left we stopped in the museum store for just a few minutes before heading out. I liked the duct tape book, Ductigami, and considered buying for my dad but didn’t for fear that he might actually use duct tape to make some of the projects inside! Steph liked the funny proton shirt.

2 thoughts on “Museum of Science and Industry with Stephanie

Leave a Reply to Mom Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *