Electricity and Electronics

• Bottle Lightning
• Frozen Shadows
• Hand Battery
• Talking Rock Case
• Trace the Star
• Under the Hood
• Van De Graff Static Electricity Generator
• Wind Tunnel

Bottle Lightning
Your family will experiment with a huge glass sphere filled with electricity and plasma. During the sphere's creation, nearly all of the air was sucked out, leaving only a few low pressure gasses. The sphere and the gasses inside are continually bombarded by lots of high voltage electricity. When you put your hands on the sphere, large bolts of gaseous plasma provide are instantly drawn to them. While you don't feel a thing, the result is visually fascinating.

Frozen Shadows
This exhibit uses electric strobe lighting and sensitive photosensitive plates to create a actual shadow of visitors. While the strobe lights flash, the visitor's body blocks the light from the photosensitive plates, creating a shadow, much the way negatives are produced in digital photographs.

Hand Battery
Most kids have no idea what causes the electricity to flow in a common battery. This exhibit will show them how that happens. All they need to do is put one hand on a copper plate and the other on a zinc plate. The potential difference in changes between both hands causes an electric charge to actually flow through the body from one plate to the other. The actual current flow is measured by a meter in front of the visitor.

Talking Rock Case
This exhibit contains a number of different kinds of rocks including metamorphic rocks, igneous rocks and sedimentary rocks. When visitors push an electric button, a voice within the case takes visitors through a tour of each selected rock.

Trace The Star
This exhibit will clearly demonstrate that hand-eye coordination is a learned ability. It takes doing something again and again till the circuits of the brain are wired to allow the needed coordination.

Under The Hood

Under the Hood activities are designed to help visitors
understand the science and engineering factors that affect a car’s fuel eciency and the changes being considered to improve cars of the future. Maybe we can’t get 100 MPGe yet, but we can improve our fuel eciency with good maintenance and driving behavior.

Van De Graff Static Electricity Generator
This is a real fun exhibit that creates an electrostatic charge by picking up loose electrons and building a huge negative charge with nowhere to go. Visitors can see how static electricity is discharged in the form of sparks and even lightning by moving non-grounded positively charged objects, such as your arm, nearby.

Wind Tunnel
You and your family will get to actually fly a model aircraft inside a wind tunnel especially constructed by the Air Force Association. You will see how movements of the control stick and throttle can cause the model aircraft to climb, turn or dive. The throttle controls the speed of a propeller, which in turn provides he wind.