Bzzz... zot!

We visited a pair of museums in Philadelphia yesterday. I took pictures of all of the dinosaur bones at the Academy of Natural Sciences a couple of years ago. You can go back to visit that post if you like.

Wouldn't just be my luck that of all the weekends of the summer, we chose Bug Fest weekend to visit? They offered free chocolate chip and bug cookies. No, I am not kidding. Deadly serious. This entomologist guy, Zack Lemann, baked bugs into poor, innocent chocolate chip cookies and was extolling the fat-free, high-protein virtue of bugs.

Number Guy made a comment about rabbit starvation and noted that the cookie tray was just as full two hours later when we swung by the front of the museum a second time. Fancy that.

The only redeeming virtue of Bug Fest, from my perspective, was Cliff Sunflower's Dancin' with the Honeybees show about the life of a honeybee hive. Yes, we had silly dance moves and hand gestures but he also tossed around some good science terms like metamorphosis and pheromones.

:: bzzz! ::

We did the AoNS in the morning and the Franklin Institute in the afternoon. The Institute was a first for everyone but me and it might just as well have been my first visit as so much has changed in the twenty or so years since I last strolled those halls. Sure, the giant beating heart is still there, but none of the other displays were familiar.

Given everyone's current fascination with planetariums, we made sure to catch a show at the Fels Planetarium. The planetarium itself was a bit of a letdown. The chairs were not theater style reclining seats; they were glorified metal folding chairs with really tall, uncomfortable headrests.

The show itself was called Tales of the Maya Sky. I can't tell you much about this program. It was supposed to teach us about how the ancient Mayas built cities aligned with heavenly bodies and used their astronimical observations and some fairly sophisticated math to build a calendar. They might have mentioned such things but I don't remember any of that. I do recollect something about an ancient Maya legend about two brothers playing "soccer" to win their father's soul back from the underworld but then I got a bit motion-sick. I closed my eyes, rested my head on Number Guy's shoulder and dozed until the closing credits. He doesn't remember anything more than I did for pretty much the same reasons.

One chamber which everyone enjoyed was the new Electricity exhibit. The kids enjoyed shocking themselves over and over on one of the static electricity displays.

:: zot! ::

The Electricity hall is also where I used my digital camera to take my first-ever video. The LEDs of the display Electrical Signals flash as visitors use their cell phones in front of it. Check this out.

Electrical Signals

We didn't get to see all that much since we arrived a bit late in the day. Next time, we shall have to arrive earlier and remember to bring sweatshirts: both museums really cranked the A/C!