Pacific Science Center
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The Pacific Science Center is a science museum in Seattle, Washington.
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[edit] Organization
Pacific Science Center is an independent, non-profit science museum based in Seattle, Washington. It sits on 7.1 acres of land located on the south side of the Seattle Center.
A satellite campus in Bellevue, Washington, the Mercer Slough Environmental Center, teaches children and adults about environmental stewardship, wetland ecology and nature awareness. Like many museums, the Pacific Science Center creates, builds and rents many traveling exhibits. The Pacific Science Center also has a fleet of vans that provide science education to schools all across the state. A division of staff workers show teachers in the state how to teach science.
[edit] History
Its original buildings were the United States Science Pavilion, part of the 1962 World’s Fair in Seattle. After the fair ended the Pacific Science Center opened. The land and buildings were leased for $1 a year until 2004 when the title deed was signed over and the Pacific Science Center Foundation officially took ownership.
The Pacific Science Center is located within walking distance of the Space Needle, and is next to the Seattle Center. It is housed in what was the United States Science Pavilion for the Century 21 Exposition in 1962. This building was designed by Minoru Yamasaki, who also was the architect of the World Trade Center in New York. The walls of each building, composed of many pre-cast concrete slabs, form an arch motif used by Yamasaki in a number of buildings.
[edit] 1960s
In the 1960s, many exhibits were carried over from the original World's Fair exhibition, though only a few of these original exhibits remain, such as the Lens and Mirror machine and a suspended moon. Many current parents and engineers fondly remember their parents taking them there.[1] One of the most notable exhibits at the time was a ramp where the buildings were built at a tilt. This exhibit was reproduced in the late 1990s. The domed Spacerium, now used for laser shows, was designed for a wide-angle movie journey through space. Before IMAX, a previous movie theater there showed films like NASA's Apollo 8 (to the soundtrack of Yellow Submarine) and the 21st Century with Walter Cronkite. Future governor Dixy Lee Ray would head the Science Center for many years.
[edit] 1970s
In the mid 1970s, the lower-level math area was dominated by the IBM Mathematica exhibit where demonstrators in orange jackets ("OJ"s) made soap bubbles and showed audiences how the stylish new Chevrolet Chevette was paving the way for the quick adoption of the Metric system. Upstairs, a giant normal curve Pachinko machine would ring an alarm before emptying out its balls. An aerospace building contained a full-sized lunar module mockup from which suited astronauts would climb out. The Life building contained an Pacific Northwest Indian long house and a working geologic model of Puget Sound. With the physical sciences, the physics witch on Halloween would ask "Would you like to boil blood in a paper cup?" or Groucho Marx would dump liquid nitrogen on the ponds after a demo. The Eames theater was originally created for a special multi-screen IBM movie for the World Fair. It was converted into an IMAX screen.
[edit] IMAX & Past Exhibits
Today the museum is composed of eight buildings, including two IMAX theaters (one of only a few places in the world with more than one IMAX theater), one of the world's largest Laser Dome theaters, a tropical butterfly house, a planetarium, and hundreds of hands-on science exhibits. In addition to the many permanent exhibits the Pacific Science Center has offered a constant rotation of traveling exhibits, including notable exhibits such as "China: 7,000 Years of Discovery", "Titanic: the Artifacts Exhibit", and "Discovering the Dead Sea Scrolls".
[edit] Current Exhibits
From January 27, 2007-May 6, 2007 Pacific Science Center will host “GROSSOLOGY: The (Impolite) Science of the Human Body.” Grossology is an exhibit based on the best-selling book GROSSOLOGY, now in its fifth printing with more than 300,000 copies sold. This 6,000 square foot exhibit features more than 20 interactive displays and helps kids answer the slimy, oozy, crusty, and stinky questions they absolutely love to ask about the human body.
Colossal Fossils: Dinosaurs Around the World From May 26, 2007 through January 6, 2008 all of Pacific Science Center will be transformed back to the days of the dinosaurs! In addition to improvements to permanent exhibits in building 1 (always a huge draw for young visitors), Pacific Science Center will be bringing in Chinasaurs: The Great Dinosaurs of China, featuring amazing fossil discoveries that are revolutionizing the understanding about the origin of flight and feathers; and Hatching the Past, an exhibit about dinosaur eggs, nests, and even embryos, showcasing new evidence to unlock the mysteries of dinosaur reproductive behavior.
[edit] References
- ^ 'Recalling the time of their lives", Seattle Post-Intelligencer, April 19, 2002
