Monday, September 24, 2012

Air and Space

 I finally got around to downloading photos from my phone, and I am seeing just how much I forgot to blog about!

We went to Air and Space a few weeks ago...

It was one of the first weeks of September, and the museum was as empty as it ever is.  We visited How Things Fly, one of our favorite exhibits because it is wall to wall hands on science experiments! They now have an online How Things Fly exhibit here.

Besides all the those, we usually manage to catch one of their interactive presentations.  This time it was a presentation on the International Space Station (ISS).  They asked for volunteers - we can provide those!  

Zorg and Leena demonstrated how far apart the Earth and Moon are, and the relative distance of the ISS.  The Earth was the size of a basketball, the moon a tennis ball, and they were about 30 feet apart.  The ISS within that scale appears to be lying directly on the Earth.  He said it was closer than New York City to us (in DC). Wow!  

Then Klenda was selected to demonstrate adaptability.  She wore distorting glasses (modeled here by Mxyl) and relearned how to catch and throw a ball.  The glasses, besides making your eyes look cartoony,  make what you see doubled and off center.

Lastly, Choclo got to model the different layers in a space suit, a job he loved!

I'm not sure the presenter realized he had chosen every single volunteer from the same family. 

We had been exploring independently before the show started, so we showed up at different times and in different places in the audience.

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