Exhibit Committee Website
The mission of the World of Wonders Science Museum Exhibit Committee is to identify, execute, and help maintain science-based exhibits that stimulate discovery for all ages.
The word "science" comes from the Latin word "scire", which means "to know". Related words include omniscience, which means all-knowing, and conscience, which means "with knowledge". So - science means "to know", which generally refers to knowing about the world around us. The exhibits at the World of Wonders science museum, whether for educational display or for hands-on interaction, are designed to foster a knowledge about, and an appreciation for, the wonder of the world around us and how it works.
Meetings and Important Dates
Meetings are held every 2-4 weeks at the WOW Museum building. The day varies, so contact chairperson Jay Bell for the latest information.
Current Exhibit Status
As of October 1, 2008
The WOW is in a cooperative partnership with the Exploratorium in San Francisco. The Exploratorium will provide the WOW with sets exhibits that change annually. The first set of 31 exhibits is in place in the WOW now. The themes for this set are light, sound, electricity and magnetism. A description of a small sample of the exhibits includes:
Delayed Speech Exhibit - the visitor puts on earphones and listens to themselves as they speak. However, the visitor hears their words up to 1/5 of a second after they say them. This delay makes it almost impossible for some people to speak intelligibly, since hearing one's voice while talking is an important component of speech.
Green Lips Exhibit - This large and dramatic exhibit explores the fact that full color pictures can be composed of red, green, and blue light sources. The visitor looks into a set of partially silvered mirrors which combine three special black and white transparencies into one picture. Colored filters can be switched around and light intensity can be controlled by the viewer to create strangely colored images of the original scene. An open question - How does this directly relate to your color television? Come to the WOW for the answer.
Hand Battery Exhibit - In this very popular exhibit, the visitor places one hand on a sheet of copper while placing the other hand on a sheet of aluminum. In doing this, the visitor has become part of a "battery" and causes a meter to register the small current that is produced. A very engaging variation has one person touch one metal plate with one hand while another person touches the other plate with one hand. Then when the two people touch each other's free hand, the "battery" is completed and the meter registers the current.
Two of Jim Pyers' exhibits are in place in the museum and are fascinating and very informative. One exhibit is titled The History of Recorded Human Information. The display takes voice recording from an actual Ediphone "Voicewriter" produced in the 1920's through 8-track tape deck technology to today's DVD player, with actual examples of a wide variety of steps in-between. The other exhibit is The Birth of the Computer Chip, which begins with the invention of the light bulb, progressing through the development of the transistor, to the purifying of silicon from sand, and culminating in the myriad of steps involved in the making of computer chips. Both exhibits are educationally fascinating and literally filled with actual historic examples of steps in technological advancement.
The Olvera Mechanical clock, which was sponsored by Dick Davis in association with the Lodi Association of Realtors, is up and running at the WOW. The clock is 9 feet tall, with a face that is over three feet in diameter. The workings of the clock are visible from all four sides. The pendulum swings, gears turn other gears, and every 15 minutes small mallets strike beautiful bells of three different sizes. The Olvera clock is a wonderful centerpiece for the WOW.s
Contacting the Exhibit Committee
Email:
Mail:
The World of Wonders
Attn: Exhibit Committee
PO Box 1671
Woodbridge, CA 95258