What is it about the museum that excites kids?
The physical scale of things that you see in a place like this is much larger than you could create in your own home or classroom. If you come here and you look at one of our aircraft or a space capsule, you are literally inches from the real thing. One of our virtual stimulation experiences is high wire bike that goes across our atrium. Basically it’s a physics demonstration. It’s forty-three feet above the floor, and it’s on a one inch cable, and it rolls out about forty feet. It really gets your attention. These experiences are more than momentary thrills that you leave behind when you run over to the next thing that attracts your attention. They are designed to really make you think about what just happened to you, or what you just did. Secondly, there is the fact that the experience is voluntary. You can stay for as long as you like at an exhibit and when it’s no longer of interest to you, or if something else captures your attention, you wander over to it. The third factor is pro
