Science Museum

We went to the Science Museum several weeks ago, primarily so we could go to the Big Back Yard, which we had never done before.  It was a nice warm day, perfect for being outside...

 There is all sorts of things to do outside, like a prairie maze...

The kids move through it faster than the parents do...

Being early July, the plants sure had grown well earlier in the summer...

There's also a 'camera obscura', a dark room where light passes through a lens on the wall, inverts the image and projects it on the opposite wall...

But most of the outdoor area is focused on major principles dealing with water, surface waters and groundwater.  Ideas like permeability and porosity...three large rocks (sandstone, granite, limestone) were there for you to pour water on to determine which is permeable.

Four large tubes were filled with different sizes of gravel/sand, you poured water into them to see which has the highest porosity and would allow the water to pass through the quickest...

A water flume that mimics dams on rivers, you see how sediment builds up behind the dam and how it's removed once the dam is removed...

Measuring lengths of rivers to see how meanders in a river affects it's length...

Another flume that looks at turbidity currents, where masses of sediment move downslope quickly.  The more dense materials settle first and the least dense settle last.  Northern Minnesota has some awesome turbidites from when we sat on the edge of the early North American continent...

And they have stream table...way bigger than the stream table I have at school...

We almost didn't get inside...but eventually Luke wanted to see the tornado machine...

He really liked destroying the tornado...

And yes...we saw dinosaurs...

And the Triceratops....

We even saw Iggy...who moved with the museum from downtown St. Paul years ago...