The ‘Big Wow’ : A New Museum Plans to Illuminate Nature’s Hidden Machinery

In a sense, the heart of science is a demonstration so simple that even a child can get the point.

Galileo dropped feathers and lead from the Tower of Pisa to demonstrate the equal effects of gravity. Gregor Mendel crossbred pea plants to reveal the action of genes. Nobel laureate Richard Feynman dunked rubber O-rings in a glass of cold water to demonstrate the temperature effect that doomed the space shuttle Challenger.

Each experiment was designed to illuminate an insight into nature’s hidden machinery. But even for the most gifted scientist, it can be harder than it looks. To create a single compelling scientific object lesson taxed even Einstein, whose genius was hard-pressed to conceive persuasive ways to demonstrate that space is curved or that time is relative.

Imagine then the plight of Ann M. Muscat.

By next year, Muscat and her colleagues must come up with at least 200 such science demonstrations to fill the 70,000 square feet of new exhibit space in a $47-million California Science Center taking shape between the rose gardens of Exposition Park and the Los Angeles Coliseum. The center, which will replace the California Museum of Science and Industry, is the heart of an eight-year, $264-million transformation of the state facility.

So it should be no surprise to find Muscat’s desk littered with drawings of a hydraulic giraffe, schematics for a high-wire balancing bicycle, sketches of interactive video “periscopes” and renderings of a 50-foot mechanical woman. Propped on a nearby easel are paintings of sharks in a proposed aquarium and children hang-gliding in a virtual reality room.

Muscat, who is the deputy director in charge of exhibits and education, is searching for what she calls the “big wow”--$21 million worth of wow, actually. That is how much the center plans to spend initially on exhibits.

Center officials hope that the new exhibits will be compelling enough to attract up to 3 million visitors a year--about one-third more than now.

Even more daunting, perhaps, is the need to weave all the exhibits into an intellectual framework that will leave visitors with a broader sense of the natural world of science and how they are part of its grand design.

The center’s initial plan encompasses two broad theme areas called the World of Life, which explores how living things function, and the Creative World, which examines the environment the human race has built for itself.

“With the World of Life, we would like you to walk away knowing that all living things have to do the same kinds of things in order to function, but they do them in different ways,” Muscat said.

The overall lesson the center hopes to teach in the Creative World is that people can create technology to enhance their lives only if they understand the energy and forces around them--and the potential consequences of their creations.

“If a person walked out and knew something only at that level,” Muscat said, “I would consider it a major success.”

Center curators said they used the opportunity presented by the current building program for extended soul-searching. They hope to fundamentally redefine the museum, tying its mission even more closely to public education.

“One of the things we felt we were not doing very well before was really integrating the presentation of science for the visitors,” Muscat said. “You don’t walk out with any bigger picture or bigger, unifying ideas.

“We wanted to focus on larger ideas in science and we really wanted to do a better job of making connections back to people’s everyday lives,” she said.

“We also don’t do very well at reaching a preschool audience. We definitely want to change that.”

Indeed, part of the proposed redevelopment project is a $30-million neighborhood science elementary school and an education center that will draw together efforts at USC, Caltech, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Los Angeles Unified School District to develop more effective techniques for teaching science.

The exhibit plans--developed by teams of center curators, science advisors, teachers and a commercial exhibit designer--are tangible evidence of an effort to popularize science that in the past 20 years has spawned 400 science and technology centers across the country. Today they collectively draw more than 100 million visitors a year.

Alan Friedman, director of the New York Hall of Science, likes to call such science centers “third generation” museums.

They dispense with the idea of traditional collections, industry-funded expositions or research. Instead, they turn themselves into collections of educational experiences, Friedman said. Facing growing competition from commercial “edutainment” theme parks and other enterprises, such science centers are placing greater emphasis on interactive and multimedia demonstrations of fundamental science and modern technology.

It is in the exhibits themselves that changes in museum philosophy, mission statements and educational goals are taking physical form.

Which brings us back to that hydraulic giraffe.

And that 50-foot mechanical woman.

The giraffe--one of the new center’s simplest exhibits--is designed to illustrate the importance of blood pressure by comparing the considerable force needed to pump fluid to the top of the exotic animal with that needed to circulate fluid through a human being.

The $1.5-million mechanical diva--one of the museum’s most complex exhibits--is the theatrical centerpiece of a multimedia presentation meant to explore the manner in which biological systems work together to maintain the balance and harmony of the human body.

After the science center opens next year, officials plan to start fund-raising for two additional theme areas called the World of the Pacific, which explores the ecosystems of the Pacific Rim, and Worlds Beyond, which looks at the universe and humanity’s efforts to explore it.