Explore the physics of motion through a variety of interactive activities and test your skills against those of other visitors. Exhibits have been purposefully enlarged in this gallery to enhance the investigation of motion-related phenomena. These exhibits will accommodate two or more participants at once and many contain timers to allow users to compare their own successive iterations of an “experiment”.

Mag-Lev Test Bed

Several magnet modules, each with permanent magnets of different types, sizes and weights can easily be added or removed from a vehicle, providing the means for experimenting with magnetic levitation and propulsion.

Visitors will discover that modules with small rare-earth magnets are more powerful than modules with larger ceramic magnets. A cargo vehicle and modular weights provide additional variables for experimenting with magnetic power/propulsion and are analogous to mag-lev trains.

Trajectory Robot Challenge/FIRST Robotics

A stationary, ball-throwing robot is located at one end of a 24-foot-long target range. At the other end is a vertical hoop that serves as a target. A touchscreen display provides visitors with a programming interface to control the robot and score points.

Visitors are introduced to FIRST Robotics - the annual, national robotics competition for high-school students - through videos and a display of some of each year’s kit of parts.

Into-the-Wind Air Track

A 26 foot long air table, similar in function to an air-hockey table, provides a low friction surface for experimenting with flat bottom “sailboats.” Users control sail angle using a radio-control system operated from the starting end of the table.

Success with sail angles relative to the wind is easily observed as boats are propelled forward (or not). Wind flowing over a sail pulls it forward, much in the same way that wind flowing over an airplane’s wings lifts it into the air. It is the “airfoil” shape that sails and airplanes have in common that cause lift to occur.

Airstream Drop Zone

A hoop target is positioned between two high-volume air blowers.  The primary activity is to control the ball in the blower air stream, angling it out toward the hoop, and dropping it through.

A round ball is held in a high speed airstream because of the low pressure that forms around the ball; the faster air (a fluid) moves, the lower its pressure. This phenomenon, the Bernoulli effect, connects to how planes and helicopters fly, how sail boats move, why a curve ball curves, and how a Frisbee flies.

Heli-flyer Launch Pad

Visitors at the activity table turn paper drinking cups into an object that hovers in the wind like a helicopter rotor.

After making a heli-flyer, visitors bring it to the air table where open-ended experimentation takes place as they adjust the angles of the blades, change fan speeds and experiment with where in the air stream to release the cup.

High-Speed Motion Analyzer

Three high-speed camera stations provide different experiments in which motion that takes place too rapidly to see with the naked eye, can be filmed with a high speed digital camera and played back in “slow-motion”.

Square Wheels Race Track

After configuring their own square wheels test vehicle, visitors race them on a track, getting feedback by timing their performance or by comparing their vehicle with a friend’s,  The “best time to date” is written on a chalkboard below an LED readout.