Dinosaurs and Cows

Spent the afternoon in Harrisburg at the Whitaker Center's Harsco Science Center, which we got into for free with our Maryland Science Center membership cards (note to anyone with kids who travels a lot: it is so worth joining your local zoo and science museum, as many of them exchange free admissions and we will be going to three museums in New England for free in the next two weeks as well as this one). Although they had advertised an exhibit on The Magic of Muggles on their web site, they weren't set up yet to Make Your Own Every Flavor Gummi Worms and most of the rest of the Harry Potter tie-in stuff was just notes on brochures -- using light tricks to make things appear to vanish, using chemicals to make impressive smoking potions, etc. Still, they have a good exhibit on dinosaur families and a lot of hands-on exhibits on health and basic physics, so we all had a good time.


This is what the sky looked like out the front window driving home. Until it started to pour when we hit the mountains near Frederick, at least.


The science center had a mix of real fossils and casts and sculpts to depict actual unhatched dinosaurs in eggs, including a couple of "dig your own" pits and a water excavation thing (you know kids and any opportunity to get wet).


These are some of the actual unhatched dinosaur eggs on display.


In the display on how physical properties work, there was a wonderful full-body virtual reality game where instead of a joystick or control pad, you had to jump around and try to slap the starfish and escape the sharks, plus this exhibit on magnetism (I made the bridge), one of those huge levers where a person can lift a ton from far enough away, and a big display of prisms and holograms.


DC has decorated pandas, Baltimore has decorated fish...Harrisburg has decorated cows. This is the one in the Strawberry Square shopping area.


And here's one advertising the NASCAR IMAX movie, complete with a boy trying to milk it underneath...


...and an actual science center cow for the science center...


...but this was my favorite, the Magnetic Poetry Cow.

I did manage to get some pictures of Maximus -- will post them tomorrow. This week is going to be insane with pre-trip chores that have to get done, even with the kids staying there for a couple of days!