Maryland Science Center, Baltimore, MD

You’re history geek occasionally wanders into other areas of knowledge. Rarely, but it happens.

Last Saturday I found myself at the Maryland Science Center (it was a first date so I couldn’t be as analytical as I had hoped to…but even geeks deserve to go out and look for that special someone). For a weekend in Inner Harbor, the MSC was not as crowded as I’d hoped, and we paid the rather modest $15 entrance fee and we were in.

MSC is geared toward children, so tripping over little ones and shin bumps with strollers are hazards of attendance. But, the lack of a crowd helped that not be as much of an issue, and it’s always fun to see little kids react to what they see and don’t really understand. Most of the exhibits were highly interactive and hands-on behaviors were encouraged. The few non-hands on exhibits were cased or too far from reach so there wouldn’t be confusion.

Our first stops were the geography and dinosaurs exhibits, but as most science museums there is no bad way to start the exhibit. The geography exhibit wrapped local and current weather and events into the historical geographical occurrences that shaped the area. The most striking part of this first exhibit was a virtual tornado, with two wind sources and some sand on the bottom. We watched the wind pick up the sand for a while but never saw a tornado form. Then, seeing as this is a museum geared to children, a kid came up and stuck her arm between the wind sources, and a funnel formed almost immediately. The geography exhibit rolls nicely into the dinosaur exhibit, because coming out of the geography exhibit as we did, the first thing encountered were models of footprints, and the opportunity to make our own in sand with rubber dinosaur feet. Repeated several times, the museum had large real fossils made into action scenes and smaller models of the scene repeated to scale AND the scale color coded bones so you knew on the real models which bones were real and which were not. A lot of the exhibit was dedicated to how paleontologists work in the field, what kind of tools they use, and how some mysteries of how they looked and lived are solved.

Next up was Newton’s playground, which was the largest Newton’s playground I’ve ever encountered. If the two of us could have easily spent an hour in there (and we probably did) a family with small enough children could potentially spend the whole day there. There were enough items that we never needed to wait long to try something out, and we could spend as much time as we wanted playing with each of the toys.

The second floor had mostly things about the body on it. I wasn’t terribly impressed with the body exhibit, but we still spent a lot of time playing around with what they did have. Also it wasn’t as sophisticated in the first part of the body exhibit, for example, to show how food digests, they put three balls in a plastic netting and you push them up and down to understand how food moves from each part of the digestive system. Complete with sounds. I suppose it would be good for little kids, but it was very simple for what else they had to offer. Every body system had an accompanying hands-on part which adds to the multi-media aspects of the museum. Further in was a walk through cell, which was well done, but overwhelming to me at least, I couldn’t imagine what a child would feel about the walk-through cell. There was also a wet-lab, which had microscopes and lab coats for small children, but we didn’t go through that part.

There was a temporary exhibit on diabetes there at the time, and it had a fun little game a la whack a mole to show how much coordination it takes to keep your blood sugar stable. Also it showed your risk factor for diabetes based on your height and weight, as well as a “Rap-fridgerator” giving a little tune about the importance of a good diet. Inside of the exhibit had a fun house like feel to show the delicate balance between high blood sugar and low blood sugar, and carnival like games to show how difficult getting research money is and how much testing new drugs must go through. I thought it was a little arbitrary to win the games and move on to the next level, but I suppose it explains why such a common disease hasn’t had much improvement in treatment over the last several decades.

Something else to quickly note is the planetarium on the second floor. It’s free with admission and our narrator was highly entertaining. It’s included, just go to the 34 minute show.

The top floor explained how crabs grow and the high risk and mortality of them before adulthood. This probably explains why the price of tasty crab is so high…but anyway, there were a few aquariums with crabs, male and female, at different times in their life cycle. And a giant animatronics crab. ExxonMoblie sponsored an exhibit about efficient cars but neither of us were impressed with it.

One issue was parking. As I had mentioned, it was only $15 for the basic adult ticket (IMAX is available for an additional price) but parking, after a voucher to decrease the price, was still $15. I suppose if it was $15 for a lot of the day, it would be worth it, but I think it went by a percentage discount. Still it was $30 to visit the museum and I don’t think that number would go down. Its convenient to the attractions of Inner Harbor and many different food options are available. If you have kids, this is a Baltimore must-see, possibly even more than the aquarium due to its increased affordability. If you don’t have kids, but you’re a kid at heart you would most likely enjoy yourself, still as an “adult-only” group I’d think about going to such a kid focused museum without them in tote.