Museum of Science

The Museum of Science has not changed that much in the last three years. We walked by the area with live butterflies. It looked like an interesting experience, but I had been in the butterfly part of the Franklin Park Zoo several summers ago. They have a theater with 3D movie shorts, but we passed on that too. The new exhibit on predicting weather was well done with Mish Michaels from CBS4 News in many of the video clips.

What really interested me were the walkabout gliders. A volunteer makes gliders fly across the room simply by creating an updraft with a plexiglass sheet. There are no moving parts. He walks underneath the glider with a sheet of plastic which generates air currents that keeps the planes afloat. As if that were not impressive enough, he has modified dead butterflies so that he can make them appear to fly across the room.

He gave me the chance to keep a foot long glider in the air. After a few tries and a lot of running around, I was able to keep it up in the air for awhile. It was very good fun albeit a little tiring. He has a pilot license and he flies gliders, so he knows a lot about flight and lift.