It's Saturday
already? Where'd the haddock go...?
explore@bristol was entertaining: although the older
splores are looking a little tatty and some of them are faulty, there are a whole load of new ones on the first floor which are great fun. The Planetarium is closed for refurbishment for the foreseeable future [sniffle - that's my favourite part] but the corridor outside it has been strung with near-floor-length curtains of fibre-optic cabling with bright white lights at the bottom: beautiful but quite disorientating to walk through them. Another new exhibit is a room that's been built on a slant but with all the fittings straight -
most uncomfortable, your sense of balance tells you you're sliding down a slanting floor but your eyes tell you you're standing on a level surface. There's a sturdy railing to hang onto all the way through, which to my dismay I was forced to use. It's the visual evidence that does it. I have no problems with slanting surfaces - don't get seasick and can usually keep my footing in fairly rough seas - but coupled with the rest...
I was glad to leave. Kai wants a room just like it though, please... [sigh]
There was a talk and slide-show on robots for the kids - it was OK, but Kai didn't find it very challenging (though I was bemused when the presenter flashed up a slide of Bush and asked if he was a robot: she got a very growly
very unamused response, half 'yes' and half 'no' - from the sprogs as well as their parents! Bush isn't very popular here...) We had fun in the Puzzle Zone though, managed to solve the Hanoi Tower puzzle really quite quickly. (Illustration
here though ours had five vinyl-covered foam-rubber discs and stood about three feet high) and I had fun with a topological puzzle - I can't find an illustration but it involved a loop of rope and five interlocking metal hoops. (The object of the puzzle was to get the rope untangled from the hoops - no problem there, but do you think I could get the damn rope back onto the hoops for the next person? Could I hell! Tch... I'm good at stalemating my opponent in chess too, and usually can't work out how I've done that either...)
Hours and hours of wandering around the place, trying everything, and Kai didn't stop talking once. Ouch. Still have a headache. But it
was enjoyable, nevertheless. Even surprised myself with some of my mathematical... I hesitate to say knowledge, because it was more a combination of instinct/common sense.
And to round the day off nicely we found a small
rocket-shaped lava-lamp, £8.50 reduced from £15, in the explore@ shop. Kai's wanted one of these for a while now, and with his extra pocket money from helping me out all week he had enough to buy it. Happy bratling!
My feet, however, are
killing me.
Ken's taking Kai to the
Wicklea Summer Fun Day tomorrow, while I crack on with the Dreams book. At least, that's the plan...
The predecessor to explore@bristol was the Bristol Exploratory, housed in what is now the
Empire and Commonwealth Museum at Temple Meads train station. The hands-on exhibits were called
splores - educational things you could play with and pick up and explore. The name's quirky and I really like it.
back
#
Joules *Dances with Haddock* Taylor
pontificated this at 12:18 am
0 Comments:
Post a Comment