Kids Give Seattle’s Center High Marks

Colin Schaefer, 6, decided his fish would look better with hair, so he added some. Next came a traffic light or two. And of course a giant birthday cake. Can’t forget that.

Not that Schaefer always was so red-hot at computer graphics. When the Seattle boy first sat down at the computer at the Pacific Science Center, he tried figuring it out the old-fashioned way, and whacked it.

That didn’t work, so he whacked harder, and squashed its buttons like bugs. Then Schaefer spied a volunteer at the center who helped him figure out the computer.

It was discovery and giggles from there on in.

“Oh coooool. Look what I did!” Schaefer exclaimed, adding a skull to the tableau as his picture, drawn by the computer, took shape.

Seattle’s Pacific Science Center challenges kids and teaches them as they have fun, said Schaefer’s teacher, Kathy Napolitano, who brought Schaefer’s class to the center for the day.

Spokane voters will decide Tuesday whether they want a Pacific Science Center at Riverfront Park. The center would be about the same size as the one in Seattle and would have some of the same exhibits.

For Lee Ann Magnelli, 8, of Seattle, the Science Center was a place to discover hermit crabs, barnacles and other tide pool denizens.

“They are really neat,” said Magnelli, shaking droplets off a hermit crab she pulled from the tide pool. “He’s crawling on my hand. Ooooo, it’s alive.”

Meanwhile, Diana Linde, “almost 8,” used a computer to calculate the difference in size between her 4-foot, 8-inch frame and a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

“I’m not afraid of you,” she told a brontosaurus robot roaring in her ear as she worked at the computer.

That done, she explored a casting of the dinosaur footprint.

Linde determined there was only one satisfactory way to assess its size: nestle into it. “I fit,” she decided.

Then it was time for a physics lesson for the class, but why use textbooks when there’s liquid nitrogen on hand?

Science center staff instructor Paul Ellis kicked off things by throwing liquid nitrogen around while the kids watched the chemical fume and steam, enthralled.

Ellis explained what happens when matter is cooled by snapping a stretchy, elastic surgeon’s glove in front of the class, then plunging it into liquid nitrogen and crumbling the frozen glove like potato chips before their widening eyes.

To show how gas expands when warmed, Ellis shot corks into the ceiling propelled by roiling clouds of nitrogen.

Solids, liquids and gases were never so interesting. The kids scrambled to field the corks like pop flies headed for the grandstands.

Told of controversy over the pro posed Pacific Science Center for Spokane, Napolitano said:

“Sure they (the children) would ride amusement park rides all day long before they would do this, but they would like to eat candy all day long, too.

“Somebody has to step in and say this tastes good, too, but it’s good for you. It’s as much fun as any playground, plus they suck up some knowledge and culture on the side.”

Nick Olmstead, 8, apparently has his mind made up about the science center.

“What makes it fun is there is all this stuff you didn’t even know about, and you get to play a lot.

“It’s more fun than TV.”

, DataTimes