My bestie and I went on an adventure on Aug. 20th (two weeks ago, now, I know) to the Springfield Science Museum. He’d never been, and I only had fuzzy memories of a school trip, so we made an afternoon of it. We had some distinctly favorite exhibits…
I swear we spent at least 15 minutes playing with the tsunami wave model display. I even took a video on my phone of the wave splooshing over the model beach house. I’m not entirely sure why this display was so fun to play with, but it was pretty awesome.
There was a boa constrictor in a tank exhibit, and I watched him swimming for awhile. It was utterly adorable when his head was underwater and he exhaled, blowing a stream of tiny bubbles out his
nose. (Alright friends, snakes can be cute.) An old turtle came up to the glass and posed for a photo for us. That was pretty cute, too.
There was a convex mirror that we stood in front of. My bestie is really tall, so it was highly amusing to see him shortened. We joked that that’s what he would look like as a dwarf of Middle Earth. I also got some pics of my bestie next to some large creature exhibits, like a polar bear, a Stegosaurus skeleton, and some moose. It was entertaining, using his height as a scale.
He had some raptures when we got into the geology section; he’s really fond of rocks and stones. This was really close to the astronomy section, and there were meteors you could touch. There was a globe that had a layer of fluid on the outside, and if you spun it and then suddenly stopped the outside, the fluid whirled in crazy patterns that mimicked the storms on Jupiter.
Then there was the Impact Simulator. We’re such nerds. It was a program such that you could choose the body (comet, asteroid, or iron/nickel), the diameter, density, velocity, and impact angle; and the program would generate a video simulation of the body impacting the planet and what would happen. We liked finding the ones that resulted in the Earth being completely pulverized. Because we’re nerds.
The gift shop was decent; we found a Hedwig plushie and a Nagini plushie. I’ll prolly get stuff for my honorary nieces & nephews when they’re a bit older.
The thing I wish we could’ve gotten to was the planetarium. We arrived right after they did the last show of the day. We’ll have to make another trip, making sure to get there early enough to catch the different shows.