Just a quick post to get the remaining miscellaneous photos from the NEMO Science Center online. There was elecricity, engineering, and water-power exhibits, as well as various displays that didn’t fit into any particular category, like how the center’s roof had some displays that were architectural, but not exactly science-focused.

In the below photo, Vicky is reflecting light from a mirror to solar panels on the bottoms of suspended cardboard planes to power their propellers and make them fly.

Vicky Powering Solar Planes to Fly

See the complete flickr set here.

Facial Expression Reader Vicky 85% Happy, 3% Disgust, 2% Fear, 1% Sad

It’s amazing that the organ most responsible for the success of our species is the one we know the least about. While we have come a long way, abandoning the cartesian duality and stepping out of the false dichotomy of the nature versus nurture debate, we still don’t know exactly how memories are encoded in the web of neurons or how much of our behaviors are hard-coded.

But we are able to observe these behaviors. We can see how our brains react to optical illusions, and infer the underlying components. We may observe how individuals respond to authority and social zones, whittling out the evolutionary advantages these reactions confer on us. Is the human brain like a black box, where we must learn its inner workings from its external manifestations? Or will we have more luck dissecting the molecular components?

See the complete flickr set here.

I could not imagine the reaction, if an American Science museum were to have a section that dealt with sex as honestly and explicitly as the NEMO science center. From French Kissing displays, to novelty condoms, to pictures of insect genitalia, to dolls in a wide variety of sexual positions… there was plenty of heart-attack inducing material for members of the religious right, but for normal people, this was a very amusing series of exhibits.

Cartoon About Hormones

My favorite of these exhibits by far was a cartoon on hormonal changes in teenagers, where a boy and a girl are put into chambers and a narrator explains everything that’s happening to their bodies. The photo above is a frame from this exhibit, where the young boy is experiencing his first ejaculation. I found the cartoon online, and you can watch the above animation here, and ask yourself whether we’d see this kind of educational material here in America.

Is this kind of education a good or bad thing? How does it compare to our American-brand, “Abstinence Only” education? Vicky did some research on Amsterdam teen pregnancy and abortion rates, and found the following empirical data:

Source: 2001 Unicef Report

The conclusion I can’t help but draw from this data is that people who aren’t educated tend to exhibit uneducated behaviors.

See the complete flickr set here. I’m curious if some of these photos, which I consider innocent enough, get flagged.

Elektra the Robot

“The medium, or process, of our time – electric technology is reshaping and restructuring patterns of social interdependence and every aspect of our personal life. It is forcing us to reconsider and re-evaluate practically every thought, every action, and every institution formerly taken for granted. Everything is changing: you, your family, your education, your neighborhood, your job, your government, your relation to “the others. And they’re changing dramatically.”

- The Medium is The Massage, Marshall McLuhan

See the complete flickr set here.

Aesthedes Work Station for Graphic Design (1982)

This very small room, hidden in the back of NEMO, virtually ignored, was a little something for Information Science. It runs from the 1940s to the 1980s, bits of history people are going to cherish in the future. The more I get into Computers as my science, the more I enjoy displays like this.

See the complete flickr set here.

There’s a Cabinet of Curiosities at Amsterdam’s NEMO Science Center, the Vrolik Collection. This display is one of many examples of the differences between Science Centers in Europe and America. There are some “gross-out” displays in American Children science centers, but lion penises and elephant clitorii are definitely not something we find in our centers here in the states.

Conjoined twin monkey

From the NEMO description of this display:

During their lives, Gerard Vrolik (1175-1859) and his son Willem Vrolik (1801-1863) began a collection for the ‘Museum Vrolikanium’. Housed in the residence of Gerard Vrolik, the museum was very well known in Europe at that time. Together, father and son collected for 70 years, resulting in an enormous collection of 5103 specimens.

Many of these specimens were used for scientific research. At that time, one often had to rely on such specimens because many techniques that we now use did not yet exist.

See the complete flickr set here. <warning>These images might disturb some readers</warning>

Conducting a Charge from the Plasma Ball to a Florescent Light

When we were first putting together displays for Port Discover, LuAnne Pendergraft was regularly correcting us when we referred to it as a children’s science museum. This was not a museum, this was a center. It was an active place, a place where kids would be doing science, not passively be fed science. It was a place for adventuring.

NEMO does a fantastic job of embodying this principle. Extremely little of the center isn’t interactive. Everywhere you go, kids are banging displays, getting their sleeves wet, or solving some puzzle. Practicing science is the practice of engaging the world around us in ways that enlighten and instill a sense of wonder.

See the complete flickr set here.

The NEMO Science Center in Amsterdam was my first opportunity to see science education in another country. NEMO is by far the largest and most unique science center I have ever experienced, with huge interactive displays and a delightful, playful architecture.

I was also impressed with how deep much of the material went. There was no attempt to dumb down subject matter or render it “kid safe” (read: non-controversial). Topics such as reproduction and displays that might be considered disturbing were present amongst the standard cartoonish displays:

Nias Islanders

In the “Codename DNA” display area, there was the above fairly creepy plaster casts of the faces of the Indonesian island of Nias’ inhabitants from the 19th century by J.P. Kleiweg de Zwaan.

There were also some awesome primary source material, like this gem from history, complete with signature:

Rosalind Franklin’s DNA X-Ray Diffraction Photo

See the complete flickr set here. I’ll be posting more photos from this science center over the next several weeks, exploring its many offerings.

This is by far the best kept secret of all the amazing cultural attractions on the Washington DC mall. If you appreciate knowledge, Enlightenment values, and science, then you MUST spend an afternoon in this room, appreciating every nook and cranny. America’s Founding Father’s were very wise individuals with a strong appreciation for education and knowledge.

Jefferson Room (Click for Flickr Set) Credit: Moi

There are names of philosophers, naturalists, and scientists everywhere. Proverbs meditating on Deism and knowledge abound. There are cherubs representing the American professions, including one chasing a butterfly with a net, representing entymology. There are paintings of women representing the different types of literature, from history to erotica. There are statues and paintings representing the different nations of the world, and what each contributes to world culture, where America is found contributing science.

My favorite of all these are the murals of women representing the different branches of the sciences. It took me four trips to this room to get photos of these murals, which I have not been able to find anywhere else on the Internet. I’m licensing these Creative Commons, so please reuse and redistribute!

Women of Science Top: Chemistry, Zoology, Astronomy, Geology Bottom: Botany, Physics, Mathematics, Archaeology (Click for Flickr Set) Credit: Moi

I love the fact that Mathematics is pretty much naked. : )

See the complete flickr set here. Very high resolution photos included.

There are some very cool subway stops in New York. One stop has tiny bronze cartoon-like characters doing comedic thinks like sawing through support columns, others have beautiful tile work, but the 81^st street subway stop in New York is the absolute coolest. It has casts of dinosaur bones and tile-work murals of sea life and insects throughout it.

This tiny set was just a catchall for photos taken in unnamed hallways and other items I didn’t have enough of to put into other sets.

81st Street Subway Stop in New York

Check out the complete flickr set here.