OMSI

We made a trip recently to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. This was a great museum, we all had a lot of fun exploring all the great science experiments and seeing the awesome science artifacts like this space capsule (picture #1).

in the picture above Grandpa Von and Chance are releasing a 2 litter bottle that they had just filled with the right amount of water and air. If you follow the pillar to the left you can see a green blur near the top of the picture, that is their bottle.

There was also a whole room of vacuum tubes and blue balls. You could connect the tubes however you wanted making them go around the room or up in the air and into cones or mazes or other fun things. In the above picture Chance is using the vacuum tube in his hand to suck up the balls then they will go up into a trough where they will be released onto the conveyor near the ceiling with you can see at the top of the picture.

Chance enjoyed watching the experiment in probability in the above picture. When you pushed the button all the balls were released then taken up to the top and dropped back into the middle of the board. The idea is that even though it is random the probabilities lay with the balls falling in a curve pattern as indicated on the board in from of Chance. And true to form the balls did fall in that pattern.

There was a Chemistry Room which was a lot of fun and I think might have been my favorite part of the whole museum. Chance and I did an experiment while Grandpa took the camera for this one. We put water, vinegar and ammonia in dishes then added Grape juice, Cranberry juice and beet juice to see what happens. Each juice turned a different color depending on which substance they were added to. Chance thought it was neat that the same juice turned different colors, I am happy that he was interested even though it seemed kind of boring at first.


Now we come to what we are pretty sure was Chance's favorite part of the museum. A representation of the Port of Portland with a big crane that you can really use to pick up big lego blocks moving them off a boat onto the land then move them over another crane that can be used to move the blocks onto another boat then onto a truck that you can drive through a tunnel which will read an actually bar code on the side and tell you what is supposedly inside the container on a computer screen on top of the tunnel. See picture below.

Another science experiment we did was to find our DNA. I had no idea it was so easy but it is, Chance and I swished some water around in our mouths then spit it back into a paper cup. Then the ladies working the table added our water along with some salt and meat tenderizer to a test tube and let Chance shake it up, after it was well shook they added a little vinegar and amazingly the DNA just separated and began to float to the top. Below you see Chance and I watching the DNA move to the top of the test tube.

In another room made just for little ones under six years old. There was a little cave to explore with flashlights and sections set up like the big rooms around the museum but smaller for little guys. Below you can see Chance and Grandpa Von stacking blocks on a scale testing their weight.

Chance almost never wants to stick his head in one of these things so I had to snap this last picture at the end of the day. We saw so many more things that just couldn't make it into the blog so if you are interested you can check them out by following the link to the right to our Flickr account. We had a ton of fun at OMSI we stayed past nap time and there was still more to do, next time we come back maybe we will check out the submarine or an Imax movie.