The Curiosity Lab, Children's Museum of Pittsburgh

More WaterPlay Fun; building boats and racing boats.

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Boat building as an execise in Science and Art; bringing the Renaissance to WaterPlay. 

Acouple of days ago classes from the Propel Braddock Hills School visited the Museum and brought with them some amazing boats to play with in our WaterPlay exhibit.  They designed and built their boats at their school in Art Class.  They all started out with the same recycled plastic base but were then allowed to use other recycled materials to create a boat.  Then they brought their boats to the Museum to race and experiment with in our WaterPlay exhibit.

I was overjoyed to hear that this kind of field trip was happening, we had just spent some time testing out our own boat building designs in WaterPlay.  I made sure to bring some extra materials and especially some tape for the students to use if they saw the need to modify any of their boat designs.  I new from experience that you need to try out multiple designs to get your boat just the way you want it.

The classes arrived at the Museum ready to test their boats out.  We had them individually race their boats againstthe clock; we timed each race with a stop watch and documented each time.  It was interesting to watch how each boat reacted to being pushed across the water by the wind machine in the pool in WaterPlay. 

We then had the students race each other’s boats across the pool.  Finally we allowed them to redesign their boats with the extra materials; some simple prototyping.  Some of the kids took things off their boats and some added new things and some built entirely new boats to experiment with.  We then observed how these changes affected the boats in the water. 

All very interesting; all very scientific.  By and by, the students left that day with a greater sense that building your own boat can be a fun way to experiment and learn about aspects of both Science and Art.

-Kevin

May 25, 2011 at 8:50 pm Kevin Leave a comment

Carnegie Mellon brings the University to the Museum

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Recently, students from Carnegie Mellon University’s Systems Engineering class developed a few projects for testing at the Museum.  This class has partnered with the Museum several times.  The students work in teams to create several projects which in turn are tested out on the floor of the Museum with visitors and staff alike.  Basically, its one big prototyping session, or one big experiment.  The students spend a lot of time building and creating their projects; but the real fun comes when they actually test them out at the Museum.  The projects this year were all very fun and very different.  What follows is a quick overview of each team’s project.  Enjoy.

The Gorilla Hand

This project looked interesting enough on its own; a giant gorilla hand sticking out of a big wooden box.  But visitors quickly found out that there was much more to this project than just that.  The students provided a glove that the visitors could put on and whatever movements the visitor made would in turn be mimicked by the gorilla hand.  You could make the individual fingers move, open and close the palm, etc.  Two interesting aspects of this project that I noticed; the students brought along the original prototypes of the project and left the back of the wooden box open so that visitors could see what was going on behind the scenes.  Great stuff.

Pasta Sound Blaster

This next project allowed visitors to play around with sound and the visualization of sounds.  Basically, the visitors were allowed to play around with the tempo and volume of a group of speakers.  On top of the speakers were assorted pastas and rice.  The vibrations of the speakers caused the materials to jump around at different heights and times depending on how you controlled the speakers.  I likened it to a moving sandbox; it was loud yet fun.

Daisy – a friendly playful robot

This was an interesting project that utilized robotics and sensors.  It also allowed visitors and staff to kick and hit a giant moving ball; always fun.  Depending on what you did to the robot it would react by moving in certain directions.  I can honestly say that I was the first to play with this robot and I think I kicked it a little to hard.  Luckily the students worked the kinks out and it ended up roaming around the Attic area of the Museum for the entire day.  My suggestion was to turn it into a moving waste basket for the Cafe’ or the Art Studio.  Maybe next year.

Digital Graffiti

This was a very fun projection project that utilized a Microsoft Kinect; it also let visitor throw colored balls all over the place.  Essentially, you throw a colored ball at a white wall, a program developed by the students projects a splash of corresponding color in the same spot where the ball was thrown.  In the end you get a wall full of splatter marks; which actually mix to create colors.  I had a lot of fun playing with this myself, you were able to create a virtual mess on a clean wall at the Museum without having to clean anything up (except the wayward balls).

Robot Art

This last project was combined science and art; which I always embrace.  The students built a robotic etch-a-sketch that visitors could play around with.  Visitors could create artwork by controlling a movable pen on a canvas using two control panels.  It was interesting to see that a lot of the artwork took on certain patterns; but at the same time there were extreme differences between each of them.  The robot could only be controlled in certain ways, but the visitors could still use the controllers to make something unique. 

Thanks again to all of the CMU students who participated in this class.  Your projects were a lot of fun to play with.  For someone like me who spends all their time at the Museum its always fun to have something new to test out and experiment with.

-Kevin

May 5, 2011 at 8:29 pm Kevin Leave a comment