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naomikritzerIt rained all day today, and we took the girls to the Bakken Museum this afternoon. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
springbok1 met us there. The Minneapolis Public Library lets you check out passes to various museums, so we ran by a library to see if we could get a pass to go for free, and sure enough, the Bakken pass hadn't been checked out yet.
The Bakken Museum is a museum of "electricity in life." Years ago, Earl Bakken (the guy who founded Medtronic) started collecting interesting historical medical devices that had relied on electricity. For a while, the collection was displayed at the Medtronic headquarters, but at some point they bought a mansion on Lake Calhoun and opened a museum.
Every Saturday at the Bakken is "Family Science Saturday," and there's a room on the first floor full of activities for kids and their parents. There's an Inventor's Table, sponsored by Ax-Man surplus, every week. They had wires and lights and switches and other bits and pieces for kids to hook together and play around with; these are loaned or donated by Ax-Man, and it's possible they also supply the volunteer who staffs that table. (The Ax-Man is possibly the weirdest and most fascinating store in the metro area -- it's got random surplus bits of all kinds, and the signs explaining what things are are very funny and sometimes suggest uses. If you live in the area and haven't ever been to Ax-Man, go! It's on University Avenue, just west of Snelling. Very easy to find.)
This week, they also had a pair of people who did a demonstration of a series of experiments in which they rolled various cans and bottles down a slope. This is the sort of thing that can be very dry or very engaging, and I kept getting sucked in even though the girls were occupied elsewhere because it was extremely engaging. Best of all, from the viewpoint of the girls, was the painting table.
It was a painting table, but you had to make your own paint. The volunteer (a local artist named Bonnie Everts, I think) had a variety of helpful signs up explaining how to do it. The basic formula was pigment + solvent + binder = paint. She had a variety of pigments available, most of them spices and other edible things. She had turmeric and paprika, cocoa, cinnamon, crushed-up berries, and some odd stuff like coffee. For the solvent, she had water. If you were using a dry pigment like turmeric, she'd have you add just a drop or two of water, enough to turn the pigment into a paste. If you were using a wet pigment like berry juice, you'd skip the water because it was already liquid. She had a selection of binders -- egg white, egg yolk, honey, and Karo syrup. I initially used honey to make paint for Kiera, but then she discovered that the Karo syrup made the paint shiny (!) and so we switched. You'd add a drop or two of the binder, mix it in, and you'd have paint.
She had ice cube trays for mixing; the pigments were laid out in their own trays; and she had water bottles that dripped out the water a drop at a time. Paper and brushes were also provided, and there were magnets so that kids could put up their paintings when they were done.
This was a fascinating activity on a number of levels. First, it immediately got me thinking about the pigments we have around the house. We could very easily do this again at home, and probably will, maybe this week. We even have Karo syrup.
Second, Abi noted that it provided a really accessible way to talk about pharmaceutical chemistry with little kids -- you mix things in a certain way to get something you can use in a different way. Abi is an analytical chemist, not a formulation chemist, but you could also do analytical chemistry with the kids by mixing up some paint beforehand and letting volunteers try to figure out what might be in that paint based on color, smell, and taste (obviously Abi doesn't analyze with taste, but almost all the components at this table were edible and you could do entirely edible paints, provided that you checked on allergies in the group you were presenting to.)
The regular exhibits in the Bakken were also quite interesting. I think my favorite was the theremin -- a musical instrument that you play by NOT touching it. If you've ever watched an old SF movie with this weird eerie music that sounds almost like a voice but not quite and almost like a violin but not quite, it was probably a theremin.
springbok1 met us there. The Minneapolis Public Library lets you check out passes to various museums, so we ran by a library to see if we could get a pass to go for free, and sure enough, the Bakken pass hadn't been checked out yet. The Bakken Museum is a museum of "electricity in life." Years ago, Earl Bakken (the guy who founded Medtronic) started collecting interesting historical medical devices that had relied on electricity. For a while, the collection was displayed at the Medtronic headquarters, but at some point they bought a mansion on Lake Calhoun and opened a museum.
Every Saturday at the Bakken is "Family Science Saturday," and there's a room on the first floor full of activities for kids and their parents. There's an Inventor's Table, sponsored by Ax-Man surplus, every week. They had wires and lights and switches and other bits and pieces for kids to hook together and play around with; these are loaned or donated by Ax-Man, and it's possible they also supply the volunteer who staffs that table. (The Ax-Man is possibly the weirdest and most fascinating store in the metro area -- it's got random surplus bits of all kinds, and the signs explaining what things are are very funny and sometimes suggest uses. If you live in the area and haven't ever been to Ax-Man, go! It's on University Avenue, just west of Snelling. Very easy to find.)
This week, they also had a pair of people who did a demonstration of a series of experiments in which they rolled various cans and bottles down a slope. This is the sort of thing that can be very dry or very engaging, and I kept getting sucked in even though the girls were occupied elsewhere because it was extremely engaging. Best of all, from the viewpoint of the girls, was the painting table.
It was a painting table, but you had to make your own paint. The volunteer (a local artist named Bonnie Everts, I think) had a variety of helpful signs up explaining how to do it. The basic formula was pigment + solvent + binder = paint. She had a variety of pigments available, most of them spices and other edible things. She had turmeric and paprika, cocoa, cinnamon, crushed-up berries, and some odd stuff like coffee. For the solvent, she had water. If you were using a dry pigment like turmeric, she'd have you add just a drop or two of water, enough to turn the pigment into a paste. If you were using a wet pigment like berry juice, you'd skip the water because it was already liquid. She had a selection of binders -- egg white, egg yolk, honey, and Karo syrup. I initially used honey to make paint for Kiera, but then she discovered that the Karo syrup made the paint shiny (!) and so we switched. You'd add a drop or two of the binder, mix it in, and you'd have paint.
She had ice cube trays for mixing; the pigments were laid out in their own trays; and she had water bottles that dripped out the water a drop at a time. Paper and brushes were also provided, and there were magnets so that kids could put up their paintings when they were done.
This was a fascinating activity on a number of levels. First, it immediately got me thinking about the pigments we have around the house. We could very easily do this again at home, and probably will, maybe this week. We even have Karo syrup.
Second, Abi noted that it provided a really accessible way to talk about pharmaceutical chemistry with little kids -- you mix things in a certain way to get something you can use in a different way. Abi is an analytical chemist, not a formulation chemist, but you could also do analytical chemistry with the kids by mixing up some paint beforehand and letting volunteers try to figure out what might be in that paint based on color, smell, and taste (obviously Abi doesn't analyze with taste, but almost all the components at this table were edible and you could do entirely edible paints, provided that you checked on allergies in the group you were presenting to.)
The regular exhibits in the Bakken were also quite interesting. I think my favorite was the theremin -- a musical instrument that you play by NOT touching it. If you've ever watched an old SF movie with this weird eerie music that sounds almost like a voice but not quite and almost like a violin but not quite, it was probably a theremin.
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no subject
Date: 2007-08-19 02:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-19 11:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-19 01:21 pm (UTC)There's also a very small museum in Edina called The Works which is a discovery-style museum of technology. It's only open on Saturdays. And we used to have a museum called the Museum of Questionable Medical Devices, but I think they closed down and gave their collection to the Science Museum.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-20 12:11 am (UTC)Also, once the fall colours get going the drive between Madison and here will be pretty, particularly if you were to go on hwy 12 part of the way. :)
no subject
Date: 2007-08-20 01:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-19 11:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-20 12:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-20 01:35 am (UTC)The Ax-Man table is awesome. Not Molly's cup of tea, particularly, but awesome.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-20 07:08 pm (UTC)