Incidentally, I spent a lot of time today in the Boston Science Museum.
They have some old models, even a functional steam engine, but also a
lot of hands on junk. Although kids do enjoy touching things and often
regard untouchable museums as boring, there is the issue of the
usefullness of the things, and even the issue of what knowledge we are
propagating to the children. Many of the exhibits were broken. The
robots exhibit had an arm shooting hoops. The worst it got was with the
model of the NASA Dante II robot. It was hands-on, all right: press the
up button to move a leg up, and the down button to move it down. Just
one leg. BTW, they had an early Amiga in one kiosk. At any rate, I was
kinda bored with so much floor space taken up by junk. In the Computer
Museum, there was a very interesting application of hands-on. They had a
part of a Whirlwind, with both the wire and tube sides of a panel
exposed (behind glass, of course). The tubes were on, and you could
actually feel how warm they got. Then there was an English->Punched card
translator...Now those are good.
>What I am moaning about is the 'hands-on' experiments using equipment
>that would be found in most homes (or could, at least be bought
>cheaply). It doesn't cost much to buy a battery and a bulb and test
>objects to see if they conduct. It doesn't cost much to buy a bucket,
>fill it with water and see what floats. Those are things that can
>easily be done at home. Let's have things that can't be done at home
>easily (demonstration engines, clock escapements, etc).
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Received on Tue Jun 23 1998 - 18:01:26 BST