FT 10: Liberty Science Center

We're in New York yet again to visit the grandparents, and this time, we decided to head over to New Jersey (new state for us!!) and see the Liberty Science Center. We get in for free with our ASTC reciprocal membership, which makes a huge difference when planning field trips! Most of these places would cost us over $100 for a family of 7! Anyway ... it's a really large facility and there was a lot to do!

We found a gym section that talked about personal fitness - this was a rock climbing treadmill of sorts - the roller was vertical, so you climbed to stay about where you were without touching the floor. Once you couldn't keep up and you got down the floor, your turn was over. 

 Magnolia did get some help from Sunny, because she was too short for some of the reaches.

Water and sand. Always popular.

Azalea is learning about microscopes too!

Woo hoo! A Sid the Science Kid exhibit! Very popular show with our kids. (Yes, it teaches them so I tolerate it. But what is UP with the annoying voices?!?!)

Air tunnels to blow light-weight balls and scarves through, and out the top. We saw a smaller version of this in Virginia once, and the girls think it's HILARIOUS.

How tall can you build the molecules and connections before the whole thing collapses?

Sunny's fascination with the Empire State Building is directly connected to the Percy Jackson books.

There was an extensive display about skyscrapers and earthquake precautions. The girls were building with foam blocks on a rocking table. 

Adult sidenote - in the skyscraper exhibit, there was a section about the collapse of the World Trade Center towers on 9/11/01. It was interesting, and disturbing, to read about the construction of the buildings and how they'd been reinforced in specific ways to prevent this, that, and the other kind of damage. But when they were hit by planes the way they were, collapse was the only possible outcome. Wow. We did talk briefly with our kids about it - the photos were right there in front of them so there was no skirting the issue.

We stayed until the museum closed, and then drove across Liberty Park to the view of the Statue of Liberty. Our girls were less than impressed to see only her back. It was also really windy and that made it pretty cold, and that made the walk from the parking lot out to the shoreline quite a hike. It's still on our list for this summer to ride the Staten Island ferry to get that view of the Statue of Liberty, and we'll wait until the girls are older to go to Liberty Island.

I don't know that we'll ever go back just for the museum because it was pretty far out of the way from where we usually go in Queens. Yes, we did drive through the Lincoln Tunnel, across Manhattan and past the New York City Hall, across the Brooklyn Bridge, all the way through Brooklyn out to Queens. 15 miles, 2 hours. I have now driven in every New York borough. But even with the drive, it was still a good way to spend a day!