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| Hands-On, Minds-On
Learning About Science and Technology |
Exhibits
THE
WORKS brings science and
technology to life for people of all ages. Our
“hands-on, minds-on” exhibits are grouped into
three major theme areas:
Gears & Gizmos — mechanisms and simple machines
Gears
& Gizmos
The Gears & Gizmos area
is full of real-world and whimsical machines that invite you to explore
how gears, pulleys, cams and other simple machines work.
Intriguing discovery stations let you crank up an amazing assortment of
mechanisms to learn how gears can change movement —speed,
direction and force. You can also create your own gear-driven
contraptions.
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Transmission: Shift the
gears in this simple transmission and explore how changing gears
affects speed and power. Challenge your friends to a gear and
muscle contest. -
Grateful Gears: 3 kinetic art pieces demonstrate gear mechanisms and acknowledge the major donors and valued volunteers that have built The Works.
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Gear Up: Crank up heavy steel balls using different gear ratios, then enjoy a surprise as the ball drops!
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Feel the Speed/ Feel the Force: Crank up fun park rides and other gear powered mechanisms to feel how gears are used to change the speed or the force of motion.
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Gear Ratios: Gear machines help you calculate gear ratios in different ways.
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Bike Gears: Figure out which gears on your bike give you the most speed.
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Gear Play: Colorful gears for young & old. Build a gear mobile or a six foot long train of gears.
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Pivot Power: Change the pivot on a giant lever and see how much force you can generate.
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Pulley
Power: Can you lift those heavy weights? Find out how &
why pulleys help! -
Giant Zipper: See wedges at work as you zip up a 6 foot tall zipper.
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Race Track: Experiment with wheels, weights and design as you build and race K’NEX cars.
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Pedal Pusher: Use pneumatic (air powered) cylinders to
move legs and turn a bicycle wheel. -
The Way Things Work: Explore a broad range of old and new machines on David Macaulay's phenomenal CD.
Build!
The Build!
area features a
tantalizing variety of rods, connectors, pulleys, wheels, gears,
bricks, wedges and other shapes to build constructions and imaginations.
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Foam Bricks: Stack up towers, houses, arches and igloos with foam blocks cut to the size of classical Roman bricks.
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Build Small: Build bulldozers, front loaders, cranes and more with Brio Builder, an open ended construction set with wooden parts and working tools for the young engineer.
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Build Big: Build cars and more with
an incredible giant rod and connector construction system from
England. The colorful,
lockable pieces are easy enough for children to use and sophisticated
enough to enchant a design engineer.
The Interactive Image
The
Interactive Image exhibits
let you explore imaging and optical technologies — from
optical sensors to image manipulation to animation to fiber optics.
Optical
Sensors:
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Light Harp: Play a harp with "strings" made of laser light.
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How Tall Are You?: Let optical sensors show how tall you are or how high you can jump.
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Street
Light: Turn on a real street light by holding your hand over its
optical sensor. -
Tracker: Watch this weird creature track your movements using sensor controlled feedback
The
Digital Playground:
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Face Warp: Digitize, squish, swirl and zig-zag your own face with transformations similar to those used by marketing professionals and movie makers.
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Fidget: Move and you will see your image plus its inverse, or stand still and you will disappear!
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Digital Dance: Dance around as your
moving image is pixelized. -
Pixel Pins: Make your own hand or face appear in a small bed of nails.
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Rachel Squared: See how the number of pixels determines the clarity of an image.
Color
Mixing
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Filter Fun: Filter color out of white light using colored disks.
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Bird
& Cage: Look through one filter and the bird disappears,
another and the cage is gone! -
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Colored
Shadows: Chase multicolored,
full-size shadows of yourself. -
Mix and Match: Play a computer game that challenges you to control the brightness of red, green, and blue lights to exactly match different colors.
Animation
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Zoetrope: Watch frogs leap and penguins waddle with this Victorian era animation toy.
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As The Picture Turns: Let your brain combine pictures using “persistence of vision.”
Bending
and Bouncing Light:
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Fun house Mirrors: Stretch and squash your image the old-fashioned way with fun house mirrors.
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Bend the Beams: See how fun house mirrors work by bending a mirror and watching rays of light.
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Amazing Mirrors: Guess what’s in a distorted picture, then find out using a cylindrical mirror.
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Light Pipe: Find out how fiber optics works by sending a laser beam down a waterfall.
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Strobe Stream: Watch a stream of water turn into gleaming, colliding drops under a strobe light.