WonderLab

We used our Clay Center membership while on vacation again. We went to WonderLab in Bloomington, IN. It was really cool. For those of you that have been to the Clay Center's hands on science area, this place was two stories of the same foot print with more packed in to every square foot. There was a giant climbing area for the kids to climb up two stories in a cable caged plant. All the kids loved to climb up in that. There was a Blue Man Group pipe with the music to several songs, Isaac and I played the StarWars theme song. There was a nice little salt water aquarium with clown fish and coral. Water experiments, a strobe drum behind a guitar to see the waves in the strings, a fan table with PVC pipe to float ping pong balls, a vertical jump measuring wall where you slapped the button as high as you could, a series of clear tubes mounted to a wall with a fan blowing balls up and out through it, a fog table with foam blocks to direct were the fog went, balls mounted on a cable that rocketed up to the ceiling, on and on and on...

This is Lexy and Natasha sitting on a bench in the WonderLab garden just outside.
This one is Isaac and Travis operating crane. There where three controls. The crane move radially, you could move the cable from the center to the outer edge of the circle and then the raising and lowering of the cable. Each box in the cage had a key hole that the cable could hook on to. We stacked up a big stack of blocks and then knocked them over. Pretty fun.

Here is Lexy gathering up a 'cloud bubble'. There were about 5 stations with bubble experiments. One of the used cables and soapy water to create a bubble, like the one at the Clay Center, but this one then had a hair dryer mounted to blow the bubble out. I would create huge 18" to 24" bubbles.

This picture of Isaac is outside in the garden. The station that he is by uses solar panel that they can rotate up and down, round and round to catch the most sun. There is an energy gage that tells them how much power that they are capturing. Then there is a bell, a fan and a few LEDs. It shows them how much power each item needs to operate. Very cool...

The WonderLab was awesome...!!! Thanks Aunt Jean for telling us about it.