October 11, 2008
On October 11, 2008, I took a trip, my first to the Maryland Science Center, located on the Baltimore Harbor. It was awesome and great experiences that I recommend everyone have that reside in the state of Maryland.
Upon starting the tour of the Science Center, my group and I went into the Newton’s Alley on the first floor. There, I was able to witness the water vortex, skee ball apparatus, and my personal favorite, the pulley that demonstrates net force. Naturally, the first exhibit I went to was the pulley machine in the middle of the room. I took a seat and strapped myself into the chair, and pulled down on the rope in front of me to lift the chair. Basically, a pulley is a mechanism that is developed to reduce friction when pulling a heavy object. In this case, the heavy object was myself, and it made it easier to pull myself up because less friction takes less effort to pull myself up. The other exhibit in Newton’s Alley that I experimented with was the water spin. I spun the handle clockwise and observed what happened to the water inside the tunnel. This exhibit demonstrated that spinning water forms a vortex (spinning, turbulent water). At the exhibit, a vortex was defined as a “whirling funnel of liquid or air that creates a vacuum in the center. The first thing that I related this vortex motion was going to the bathroom and flushing the toilet, the same type of thing happens to the water than flushes down the drain. In full, the contents inside the toilet are pulled toward the middle of the bowl, where the center of the vortex is, and forced down the toilet!
Inside the Maryland Science Center :).
After leaving Newton’s Alley, my group and I went to the second level where we found the Your Body exhibit. This gallery was by far, my favorite. In the Your Body part of the second floor, we saw the spinning wheel that I often see in movies that are used to hypnotize psychiatric patients. In the exhibit I learned that the brain has different detectors for motion in different directions. When I stared at the moving wheel for about 30 seconds and then stared at my friend next to me, I thought she was moving towards me. In reality, she wasn’t moving at all but, my brain made it look like she was moving in the opposite direction of the wheel. This is because the detectors in one direction get tired after being used for a long period of time, so the detectors that are used for the opposite direction become stronger. I thought that this was pretty interesting but, I didn’t really see how it was used as a type of hypnosis. Thinking about it, I think that the spinning wheel can be used for hypnosis when under the influence of some mentally stimulating drug, like adderall.
The other exhibit that I went to in the Your Body gallery was exhibit regarding the skins reaction to the heat, cold and pain. In the exhibit, there were metal bars that varied in cold and warm temperatures. When I put my hands over the pipes, the mixture of cold and warm heat made a burning hot sensation on my skin. After reading the synopsis of the exhibit, the reason the cold and warm temperatures together felt so hot, was because my brain was tricked into thinking the pipes were hot when processing the two different signals. I think the exhibit could have been more enlightening by showing some of the mechanism that the brain undergoes when processing two different signals.
The next gallery that my group and I went to was the Science Arcade on the third floor. My favorite exhibit there was the Whispering Dishes. In that exhibit, there were to satellite looking dishes placed on either side of the room. One group member sat in the front of one dish and another I sat in front of the other dish. There were red rings that were set up in front of the dishes for people to talk into and in trying it; we discovered that sound waves are bounced between dishes. I heard my partner and my partner heard me because the special shape and size of the dish allowed sound waves to travel through the room and to the other whispering dish.
The last exhibit I went to before leaving the Maryland Science Center was in the Blue Crab gallery. This exhibit was about the migration of the Maryland Blue crab. I learned that female blue crabs have the bright red-tipped claws and do not grow as big as males. Males have blue-tipped claws and migrate to the deeper parts of the Chesapeake Bay during the winter time. A little fact that I thought was interesting was that both terrapins (GO TERPS) and blue crabs live in the Chesapeake Bay, but crabs live solely in the water and the terrapins live in the bay and on land. Female blue crabs only mate once in the life, unlike female terrapins or even people for that matter!
This is Maya, touching the warm and cold metal pipes.
Maryland Science Center