FFA--LEARNING AT THE MUSEUM

LEARNING AT THE MUSEUM
Museums Appeal to All Ages
The five Great Lakes hold a fifth of the world's drinking water.  We learned that today from Chuck, the bus driver, as we headed along Lake Shore Drive near Lake Michigan.
Trip organizer Rick had scheduled a day at the museum--the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago.

After a brief lesson,
Andy tries his hands...
and feet on the Segway.

We were early.  Traffic wasn't quite as bad as we had anticipated.  But arriving at the group entrance well before the 9:20 a.m. opening didn't get us into the Great Hall early.  The museum had neglected our Coal Mine Tour, already paid, and then argued about printing specific tickets with given times for the 110 of us.  We won, but it took half an hour.  That was perfect--exactly enough time for my sister Jean, my brother-in-law Jim, and Mom to maneuver through the much-more-serious traffic jams north of the city to meet us for a day at the museum.
Activities and exhibits kept us very busy from ten to four.
In Transportation we all tried the Segway.  Tara, already an experienced rider, Segway-ed circles around the pillars.  The rest of us quickly mastered the lean to move forward and the stand straight to stop.
"I told you I always thought a Segway was practical for going to school!" said Tara.

Andy takes Grandma K
for a speed ride around
the museum.

Other exhibits involved the Zephyr train that caused the streamlining of many appliances from the 1950's.
Cadavers sliced into cross sections and mounted between sheets of glass showed the internal human body.
The weather and physics wing had a wave tank that illustrated the impacts of a tsunami and a thirty-foot vortex to show how whirlwinds and tornadoes behave.

Tara checks up on her
students via email from
the astronomy wing of
the museum.

The genetics displays had live mice of different colors sleeping in plastic balls and baby chicks just pecking their way out of the eggs.
And every exhibit featured hands-on show areas and learning activities for all ages. 
Jean, Jim, Andy, Tara, Grandma Helen and I meandered among the displays--reading, pushing buttons, listening and experimenting at whatever interested us.  Every so often we caught up with groups of students from Tri Valley Central School and other schools that are part of our Schoharie Valley FFA Tour.  Tara moved in and out, checking up on the kids and returning to visit with us.The highlight of our day was a trip into the coal mine, the first and for a time the only exhibit at the museum.  The remains of an actual working mine, the Museum Coal Mine still has coal on a wall and actual mining equipment from 1893 and later.  That was the year the museum was built to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Columbus' discovery of America.  It opened a year late.

Grandma K experiments
with the coal loader in one
of the railroad exhibits.

Tara, Jean, Andy, Grandma K, Sue and Jim appropriately
gather in front of the John Deere tractor at Chicago's
Museum of Science and Industry.

Clinging precariously to
the climbing wall, Andy
makes his way to the top.

                                
                                 
        Our tour guide demonstrated the explosion of methane and showed us a canary cage used to check for the presence of gases.  Grandma Helen even walked up the four flights of stairs at the start of the tour and maneuvered over the slightly uneven terrain inside the mine.  Pretty good for a 96 and a half-year old.  She was particularly interested in the pictures of the original miners, some of whom came back as tour guides many years later. Originally their pay had been 17 cents a day.  They could earn as much as 75 cents a day, but it was based on the weight of the coal they had mined. I wondered how that compared to their pay as tour guides, but no records remained.
It was a quick good-bye, but Jean and Jim had commitments, and traffic north multiplied after 3 p.m.  We boarded the buses as ordered and pulled out early just before 3:45 p.m. It had been an exceptional day of looking and learning.  I texted Jean to thank my family for coming.  It was a day of loving as well.
An hour at CaBela's Sporting Goods store gave the kids a chance to unwind and shop.  We chaperones all know from experience that for teenagers too much motel time is never a good thing.