the Science Museum of Oklahoma

Our second tourist day in Oklahoma City was spent at the Science Museum of Oklahoma. Pretty neat! A lot of the exhibit sections were too advanced for our kids - more upper elementary and middle school level, but we made it work.

We could go to their planetarium shows for free with our regular admission (instead of paying extra, like at other places we've been), so we went to both shows. The first one was kind of weird - it was attempting to explain the Christmas Star with provable science and astronomy records, and it just didn't work for us. AC and I were disappointed by it and actually fell asleep. The second was much better - the sky dome was programmed to show what the sky would look like that night at a certain time over the city, and an actual person (rather than a recording) pointed out the constellations and told the Greek myths of how they came to be. THAT was an astronomy lesson.

There was a Live Science demonstration in which a guy blew up stuff on the stage - he popped a balloon with static electricity, and basically made a dry ice bomb with a soda bottle and liquid nitrogen. It was pretty entertaining.

The biggest hit of the day was the hurricane demo. It was this little deal where you get inside and shut the door, and the fans inside blow up to 80-some miles an hour for about 30 seconds so you can see how windy it gets in a hurricane. Our kids thought that was great! They laughed and laughed. There was no one else around so they did it again and again, probably 5 or 6 times before someone else came along and wanted a turn and we made them get out.

The littles playing with foam blocks in the small children section.

Sunny putting some tangram shape puzzles together.

Birdie playing with a huge bubble wand at the bubble table ... and then she started taking it over to the water table section to rinse it off. Her little science experiment - very cute. It's interesting to see what kids do when the adults stay out of the way.

Posy and some stacking thing-a-ma-jigs