The Science Musuem
We’ve now been in Valencia for over a week, and we’ve done a lot of things. On Sunday we biked down to the beach, which was fun until my dad got a flat. In the end it still all went well though. There’s one thing that stands out more than the beach in the last week though; the science museum.
The science museum (Museo de las Ciencias) is in the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències (Valencian) or the Ciudad de Artes y Ciencias (Spanish), a complex of modern buildings which includes the aquarium and the museum. On Monday we walked almost 5 kilometers to get to the museum. Since it was a Monday, we knew it wasn’t going to be that crowded, but there were still a bunch of school groups. Luckily, we didn’t run into them much while we were inside.
We went into the museum on the ground floor, but the actual exhibits start on the first floor. The first thing we saw when we got to the first floor was a bunch of chicken eggs in glass containers. Some of the eggs had holes, which means that the chicks would be hatching soon! There were other animals, but they were already alive, not in eggs. We saw a tarantula hiding in a hole, some stick bugs, a giant cockroach, beetles, and lots of ants. There were some baby stick bugs too, but they didn’t really look like sticks.
Next we went into the sound exhibit. There were a lot of activities that you could do with sound. One of my favorites was this really long tube that you talked into and then you could hear what you said a few seconds later from the other end of the tube. The tube just looped around the ceiling and came back right next to where it started. I also liked the activity with lots of thin wooden sticks attached on the top and bottom by strings. If you hit one end of the sticks you could watch all of the sticks move like they were hit in what looked like a wave. Further into the exhibit there were studio-like rooms that had some instruments you could play. There was a piano, which my sister played, and I played the guitar. There was also an electronic drum set, but we couldn't really get it to work well.
We went back to check on the chicks after the music exhibit, and one of them had hatched! My sister was really excited, so she rushed over to show my parents. I thought that the chick had a lot of feathers after just being born, because I remember raising chicks in preschool and they were all ugly and bald.
We went to the “Viral” exhibit next. It was about diseases, but it still had a bunch of fun activities. There was this one game where you had to stop the flu outbreak by vaccinating people before they could get infected. I lost my first time playing it, which means everyone got infected, because I was confused at what you were supposed to do at first. There was also this claw machine full of disease cell stuffed animals, but you didn’t actually win anything if you got one. All it did was tell you what disease you got, but it was much easier to get the disease than it would be if it was a regular claw machine. That means it wasn’t rigged.
After Viral we went up to the second floor. The entire floor was about Valencian scientists, but it wasn’t very exciting so we went to the third floor. The first thing on the third floor was an exhibit about cells and chromosomes. My favorite activity there was seeing how far you could jump without a running start. I got 1.9 and 1.8 meters. There was also a room with a bunch of taxidermied animals with mutations. The most unusual things there were a chicken with 3 feet, and a goat with 6 feet.
One of the other exhibits on the third floor was about brains. There were activities about memories, and also activities meant to trick your brian. My favorite activity was the basketball like one, but instead it was a tennis ball with a small hoop. . You put on glasses that make everything look like it’s moved to the right. You’re supposed to take 15 shots with the glasses on, and then your brain would be trained to shoot everything a little more to the left than it seems. When I took the glasses off, I wasn't that far off, but you can’t say the same for my dad. He missed his first few shots by multiple feet because his brain did adjust.
The last exhibit in the museum was about Mars, but we didn’t go to it because we had a movie in Hemisfèric to catch. Hemisfèric is right next to the science museum and it is a movie theater with a big round screen. When we got there they gave us a headpiece that narrated the movie in the language of your choice. The movie was about oceans and it was pretty cool because of all the animals it showed. Everyone really liked the part about sea otters because they’re cute when they float around. When the movie ended, we left the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències and went back to our house.
On Friday my sister, dad, and I went back to the museum to go see the exhibit we missed. My sister really wanted to check on the chicks though, so that’s the first thing we did when we got there. This time there were a lot more chicks. The one that hatched the first day we were there wasn’t there any more because the museum moved it out so it could be cared for.
After checking on the chicks we went right to the third floor to go to the Mars exhibit. It kind of reminded me of the Galileo Museum in Florence, except more interactive. There were simulations of what it was like to look at Mars through telescopes from different time periods. There was also an entire room about all the movies and games made based on the theory that there’s life on Mars. One of the games was Space Invaders, and they actually had the old arcade game there to play. I played against my sister and ended up destroying her, even though she put the game on easy mode.
I had fun both days at the science museum. I thought that all of the activities made the exhibits better than those of an art museum. I’m excited to go back to the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències to go to the aquarium. It’s supposed to be the biggest aquarium in Europe, so I’m sure that will be lots of fun too.
